Joe Pantalone 51.6%  | George Smitherman 22.6%  | Himy Syed 12.9%
Toronto Mayor Round 6

By John Ford, Vote By Choice
OTTAWA – People participating in a Ranked Choice Voting experiment have cast ballots parallel to the 2010 Ontario municipal elections.
While in the experiment the Ottawa Mayoral contest was won on the first ballot, the Toronto Mayor was elected after six ballots needed to break the fifty percent plus one threshold.
Joe Pantalone was able to achieve 51.6% with distributed votes from dropped candidates Rob Ford, Sarah Thomson, and Abdullah-Baquie Ghazi.
George Smitherman reached 22.6% …

By Greg Burrell, The General Ledger
Back near the beginning of the election campaign in Toronto, I wrote a post blasting the leading candidates for their lack of progressive ideas and unwillingness to fight for the people of Toronto (Toronto’s progressive political void, 17 June 2010). I commented that the race for mayor of Toronto had been disappointing for all progressives, especially because of media skewing the issues that matter, and the long campaign certainly has been nothing but disappointing. Adam Giambrone’s campaign self-destructed long before we were able to hear his …

From Take The Tooker
50 politically motivated cyclists took to Bloor today (Oct. 23) to say “We Bike We Vote”.
En route they were greeted by Mayoral hopeful Himy Syed who redirected cyclists to the car drop-off loop across from Trinity Bellwoods Park, jumped on a table, and passionately articulated his desire for a bicycle-friendly city.
The mass then took their message for bike lanes on Bloor to the offices of Councillor Vaughan, and Mayoral hopefuls Joe Pantalone and George Slitherman.

Vote on Monday, Oct. 25th for bike friendly Council candidates! …

CP24′s “Your Vote – Toronto’s Race for Mayor”
Final Televised CP24 Mayoral Debate
Aired Tuesday October 19, 2010, 8 p.m.

Your Vote – Part 3
4 minute 10 second mark:
GEORGE SMITHERMAN: My first question is to Councillor Pantalone. Three weeks ago you said you would vote for me if you were not on the ballot. Since that time, a report card from ArtsVote gave me an A+, a higher mark than you receive. The Toronto Environmental Alliance gave us both A+. So I was a bit surprised to hear you encourage people …

Report by Michael Pihach, InTorontoMagTv
Mayoral debate at The 519
Two of Toronto’s top three mayoral candidates took questions from the public at the 519 Church St. Community Centre on October 18.
Issues discussed included funding for HIV/AIDS prevention, support for local business, safe injection sites and bed bugs.
IN Toronto was there.
Candidate Rob Ford was not.

Pantalone showed himself to be out of step with where much of the progressive, left of centre is at the moment. Perhaps if the wider voting public had been allowed to see more of Himy Syed, the city would be in the throes of the same deliberation we here in ward 19 are currently in the midst of between Mike Layton and Karen Sun, but Pantalone simply is not in step with the wider progressive movement.

By Andrea Houston, Xtra
Rob Ford may not have been at the mayoral debate at The 519 Church Street Community Centre Monday night, but that didn’t stop the two other candidates or audience members from calling him a coward for not showing up.
Even before the debate got rolling, moderator Mathieu Chantelois called Ford’s absence “disappointing.”
“He’s scared!” someone yelled from the middle of the audience, a standing-room-only crowd numbering around 300, which was largely divided between those wearing green Joe Pantalone shirts or purple George Smitherman …

BY Chris Bilton October 06, 2010 11:10 EYE WEEKLY
“Fringe” candidate may be the F-word of the mayoral race. In a municipal election where anyone with $200 can get their name on the ballot, and where voters will have twoscore names to choose from, it’s inevitable that some of the mayoral candidates are going to be operating under the radar. There’s probably a good reason that we don’t hear much about some of the candidates, but there are more than a few occasions where good ideas, …

From Dandyhorse Magazine, Volume 3, Issue 2 // Fall 2010
Rob Ford
“Working for the People”
Age 41, High school football coach, City Councillor for Ward 2 North Etobicoke, helps run the family business Deco Labels and Tags.
robfordformayor.ca
OLD QUOTE: “I can’t support bike lanes. Roads are built for buses, cars and trucks. My heart bleeds when someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.” — 2007
NEW QUOTE: “I will guarantee to trim the fat…at City Hall.”
BIKE LANES: No
DIRTY LITTLE SECRET: A 2007 city council video (now a …

By Mike Adler, InsideToronto
There was one question everyone came to ask – the one about money.
And yes, the leading candidates to be Toronto’s mayor – save one – seemed to promise the arts community will get a lot more.
That one candidate, for those familiar with the city’s mayoral race, was no surprise.
“I would love to be able to promise it, but we’re $3 billion in debt,” Rob Ford told 400 artists, art patrons and arts workers at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
The Etobicoke councillor voted this year to support a …

Cycling advocates aim to grow awareness amongst candidates of cyclists’ concerns with current conditions.
By Yvonne Bambrick, Toronto Cyclists Union
Toronto, September 27, 2010 – In an effort to share the daily experience of thousands of cycle commuters, the Toronto Cyclists Union led 8 of the Mayoral Candidates on a 30 minute rush-hour commute by bicycle this morning. Candidates were invited to share their experience & plans with the media at a 9:15am press conference following the ride.
Yvonne Bambrick, the Toronto Cyclists Union’s Director of Communications led today’s 20 person ride …

By Steve Kupferman, Torontoist
Today was Toronto’s tenth annual iteration of World Car Free Day. This year, for the first time, the event was held in Queen’s Park North, where roads were blockaded to car traffic from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Few people turned out for the event, making it less a celebration of pedestrians and cyclists than a massive, desolate mid-day auto traffic obstruction.

Dan McDermott, director of Sierra Club Canada’s Ontario chapter, which orchestrated the event in partnership with the City, told …

From All Fired Up In The Big Smoke
This one’s mine.
My colleagues here at All Fired Up in the Big Smoke are too compromised. Too caught up in the race. Too waist deep into the mindset of strategic voting and settling for A.B.F.
I am an old hippie. It’s not a label I shun. In fact, I embrace it.
As an old hippie, I retain a mighty mistrust of institutions, especially those ones that influence us greatly but seem impervious to our presence. Those we can only ignore as …

Produced by calixtube
Do you vote for millionaires?
Give your head a shake!

By Kelly Grant, The Globe and Mail
Well, this is guaranteed to be a time-sucker inside at least five campaign offices in Toronto.
OneStop Media, the company behind the TV screens in TTC stations, has unveiled a new game called Mayoral Munch. It’s Pac-Man with a political twist.
Players select one major mayoral candidate to be Pac-Man, which automatically turns the other four into baddies.
The candidate picked most often sits atop a constantly updated poll that will be displayed on OneStop’s screens across Toronto.

HiMY SYeD – Fast forward to the 3:17 mark
As of …

By Mike Adler, InsideToronto
Avvy Go, a lawyer working with Chinese and Southeast Asian immigrants, follows Toronto’s race for mayor and for a month she’s felt depressed.
Ever since Rob Ford spoke of his desire to close the door on newcomers – saying the city can’t take care of the people it has – “it seems like everybody else is trying to race to the bottom along with him,” Go told a mayoral debate this week.
Members of her own community have echoed Ford’s comments, said Go, representing the Colour of Poverty campaign …

By Josh Hume, NOW Magazine

An incumbent councillor is harder to get rid of than a pool shark hogging a pub’s lone billiard table, dispatching all comers before they have a chance to sink a single shot.
To …

By Matthew Kupfer, Eye Weekly
HiMY SYeD wants a complete reboot of the city with citizens’ rights at the centre. No wonder he’s been accused on Twitter of impersonating Toronto’s original rebel mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie.

Editorial in Share, Canada’s Largest Ethnic Newspaper
Former Ontario Conservative Party leader, John Tory, has put an end to speculation over his plans for October’s mayoralty race. He is not running.
Tory, who is already very active in civic life as Co-chair of the Toronto City Summit Alliance and has his own radio talk show, has made it clear that he will not run for mayor of Toronto a second time. This should end the public’s (and mainstream media’s) infatuation with the idea.
In response, a Toronto Star editorial stated, apparently without any intention …

By Darcy Higgins, Push Food Forward
Food Forward’s first event Eat In at City Hall’s new green roof was a great success, with about 50 people coming together to talk about food as a priority in the 2010 municipal election.
Special thanks to mayoral candidates, Keith Cole, Joe Pantalone, Himy Syed, Sarah Thomson, as well as several council and trustee candidates for joining us. View Joe preparing his lunch for the event, on his blog.
Policy ideas that were outlined as priorities for Toronto’s next Council can be found here.
Photo by Lip Liew

Now, we don’t want anybody to finish this post and walk away thinking it’s an out-and-out endorsement of Mr. SYeD. It’s too early for that. Questions still remain that need to be answered. But we will confess to having somewhat of a crush on the candidate, politically speaking of course. So consider what follows to be an unapologetic endorsement of HiMY SYeD being taken very, very seriously as a candidate for mayor of Toronto in 2010.

By Natalie Alcoba, National Post
Mayoral candidates tusselled over whether or not to extend the vote to non-citizens during a debate under the vaulted ceilings of U of T’s Hart House last night, with Rocco Rossi and Rob Ford agreeing it’s not the way to go.
Mr. Rossi said it is an issue he has been “torn on for years,” but has concluded that Canada’s requisite three years of residency to achieve citizenship makes it “not a lot to ask, relative to every other country on …

Don’t be fooled into believing there are only six choices for mayor of Toronto, There are more than 6 candidates for Mayor.
Himy Syed – Fast forward to the 6:53 mark

By Jon Sufrin, Toronto Life

The Rebel Mayor situation, the municipal election’s only fun gossip story so far, may have ended before it was spoken of outside of city hall. For the uninitiated, an anonymous tweeter known as Rebel Mayor has been poking fun at just about every public figure in Toronto since November 2009, with a particular emphasis on mayoral candidates. The identity of the musket-wielding, Scotch-swilling, Prius-driving, old English–spouting reincarnation of William Lyon Mackenzie (who chronicles the travails of his “team” as he campaigns to reclaim his place as Toronto’s mayor) …

By Adrian MacNair
If you read Friday Photography’s opening paragraph yesterday, you’ll note that I said there are some stories I’ve been working on. One was a story I found out about through a friend after Mike Layton announced his intent to run in Toronto’s Ward 19, Joe Pantalone’s old haunt that he’s vacated to run for mayor. So by the time I learned of the news, it had already been several days since the mainstream media had written up their quick and dirty stories …

By David Rider, Toronto Star

It was a chat that men in the Layton line have been having since before Confederation – “What do you think about me running for office?”

“Jack gave me some of his dad’s advice,” says Mike Layton, new candidate for council in Ward 19 – and the son of the current federal NDP leader, the grandson of a federal cabinet minister, and on back.
The advice? “Never give up a chance to serve; think about that before anything else, and make sure this is something you will enjoy.”
It’s …

By Jamie Bradburn, Torontoist
Cheered on by supporters as he filed his papers, Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina) officially entered the mayor’s race this morning.
Pantalone is positioning himself as the candidate to carry on the work of the Miller administration in a non-flashy, down-to-business manner—as he told the Globe and Mail’s Marcus Gee, “you want someone who will do the job, not someone who is going to entertain you.”
So far two hopefuls (Karen Sun and Himy Syed) have submitted their papers to fill …

By JENNIFER LEWINGTON, The Globe and Mail
As soon as the bell rang yesterday to kick off the Toronto election race, a contingent of fresh and familiar faces quickly put their names on the ballot for Oct. 25.
First among the 40 who signed up on day one of the municipal campaign, up from 24 on the first day of the 2006 contest, was former Liberal Party national director Rocco Rossi, bidding to succeed Mayor David Miller.
“I will be able to put the team and the money in place to put a …

By DON PEAT, The Toronto Sun/ SUN MEDIA
Last Updated: June 25, 2009 5:22pm
Even before the city has announced locations of temporary dump sites, residents are threatening to boycott and set up pickets at the dump sites.
Christie Pits residents told the Sun that if the park is made into a temporary dump site, as is expected to be announced this afternoon, they’ll do whatever they can legally to keep the Pits from filling up with garbage.
“I think it’s a reasonable thing to voice our opposition in every possible legal …

By DON PEAT, The Toronto Sun, SUN MEDIA
Last Updated: 25th June 2009, 9:22am
Christie Pits residents are fuming at the thought their beloved park could be turned into a temporary dump.
While the city has yet to announce the location for its new temporary dump sites, residents see temporary fencing being set up and figure the park is about to get filled with garbage.
Friends of Christie Pits say the decision stinks, especially after watching the 2002 strike ruin the park with piles of garbage from the 16-day city strike.
The group is planning a protest for 11 a.m. today …