I mean, purportedly, Kwame Kilpatrick literally had someone murdered by his own police force. All Rob Ford had to do was take some money he wasn’t supposed to.

EDIT: Sorry, it wasn’t a campaign finance contribution. He was endorsing a fundraising campaign using the official City of Toronto logo.

“Lefty” is never used in self-reference.  It’s little more then a reactionary sneer.  As an actually left-handed person I find it more then a little insulting.

Having said that, you other point below that Ford wouldn’t have won had the rest of the field been about the quality of this year’s GOP presidential hopefuls is quite true.  But whoever wins will have to pander to either the suburbs or the urban areas on micro-issues to get elected, thus spending their entire term being despised by half the electorate, and nothing will get done on area wide problems.

Ford pandered to angry little everymen for his votes in any part of the city. His policy platform was practically nonexistent and what did exist was laughable. You can’t sell nothing with a rate sheet or a schematic, you need “Gravy” and other pandering statements which amount to nothing. Some of the votes he got were voted against someone, which is not democratic. Some of the votes were people willing to accept nothing in exchange for their confidence. Fools.

Whether the votes in the suburbs were to the Right before amalgamation or because the votes in the suburbs were by persons willing to accept pandering hardly matters, right? Because it is likely both.

The only thinking people I know who voted for Ford did so specifically to shake shit up. IMO the only legitimate votes for Ford.

Now overlay a pre-amalgamation map.

Now consider how amalgamation came to be. Who, of what affiliation, rammed it through? Why?

Now consider where Bay Street & other places of influence are. Is it the suburbs?

Go ahead and overlay a few previous mayoral elections, just to be sure. Go ahead and check the bona fides of the mayors outside Toronto pre-amalgamation.

As for what got Ford into office, it is a combination of his own doggedness and his father, who was an MPP and provided a comfortable sack of comfort to his boys, which allowed Rob to afford to run. That and he had little to no competition. 

He only began making life hell for everyone (not just the left) at City Hall after becoming Mayor. As a councillor he was inept, never passing anything of his own and opposing the work of others (ineffectually, like 43-1 ineffectually) and was generally good at filling potholes and pretending to work. He was laughed at. He would not be Mayor had the centre or left fielded a worthy candidate. He would not be Mayor if Tory had decided to take a stab at it. He fell into a hole, that’s how he became Mayor.

Given the relative vagaries of his charities we don’t know (or care) whether he benefitted directly. Some places he claims to have raised x amount, in other places it is x amount. Look at his constituency website and his page as Mayor, then look at the website of the charity in question. 

But it doesn’t matter. The asking, the asking & the manner of asking for the donations to begin with is where he went wrong, where the Integrity folks caught him screwing up. He probably benefitted for the asking (if you don’t understand then you can’t be helped by me) or the perception by and of the parties asked were skewed by the asking or donating. 

Then he made it 1000x worse by standing up in council and doing something -absolutely- wrong.

If it were Miller he would not have stood and made an ass of himself with a blatant COI. Miller is a lot of things but stupid and oblivious to parliamentary ways are not among those.

BTW, your own vitriol maxed out way above Cory’s.

To bad about you losing your Mayor. Good to see that you didn’t like or approve of him either. What were you saying again?

Instead, maybe we should recognize that a Lefty who did things with some passion and relateability to the voters all over the city instead of an island contained within of a few streets downtown is the way to go. Blaming Ford’s victory on Harris and the sort of voters that We Find Distasteful is weak. I sure hope we can leave that brand of excuse-making behind us and find someone who actually appears to like people.

He should have been sanctioned in some way, but this disproportionate sudden death was not the way to do it. It is neither just nor good for the city. It may even result in a second Rob Ford term that we otherwise were going to be spared.