Posted by John Michael McGrath, OpenFile Toronto
Here’s an item from the weekend that shouldn’t be missed: the Toronto Star/Angus Reid survey on Rob Ford’s approval rating, subways, and who Torontonians trust on these issues. But before we dive in to the numbers, why does a poll like this matter three years before an election? Because the Mayor and his brother Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etoicoke North) think they’ve got re-election in the bag. From Marcus Gee’s Saturday column in the Globe and Mail:
Councillor Ford said …

By Orwell’s Bastard
Storify: great for aggregating tweets, but you can go blind putting them in order if you’re dealing with more than a handful.
If only there were a sort function …
[View the story "Why it's important to kill off the Pissed-off Taxpayer meme | #TOpoli" on Storify]
Tips of the chapeau to @AureliaCotta and @timfalconer and @HiMYSYeD as well.

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! …

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.

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 Katie Daubs, Toronto Star
Ken Wood can’t afford glitzy t-shirts. His campaign office is his basement apartment and his best asset is his colour printer.
“I’m the poor people’s candidate,” Wood told a group of would-be councillors, adding that he lives off a disability allowance.
Mayoral candidate HiMY SYeD, (who spells his name with lower-case vowels in homage to a former teacher) held a gathering for “unincumbent” candidates like Wood at the Dovercourt Baptist Church on Monday. Since nine councillors are retiring or running for mayor this year, …

By Mike Adler, InsideToronto
Underdogs and also-rans take heart: more change than usual is coming to city council, a gathering of non-incumbent candidates heard Monday, Sept. 13.
It’s normally “near impossible” to defeat a city councillor, and some can be with us for decades, but on Oct. 25 nine of 44 council seats have no incumbent running, said Himy Syed, a mayoral candidate who called council challengers to a Bloor Street church to help shorten their odds of winning.
In the front row was Daniel Murton, running to unseat Pam McConnell in Ward …

By Matthew Woolley, blogTO
A gathering for “unincumbent” council candidates organized by mayoral candidate HiMY SYeD was held at Dovercourt Baptist Church yesterday.
About a dozen participated in the underdog’s pep rally – with nine city councillors retiring or running for mayor, it is an unusually open year for council candidates from any background or experience level.
But unlike their more visible, mayoral counterparts, these DIYers came out to encourage each other and swap stories.
“We’re all coming at you like vultures,” one candidate said.
When they’re off …

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

From Toronto Star Photo Blog, July 2010
Some of the best of Toronto Star photo department’s best pictures of the Hot month of July!

By Dave Meslin, Mez Dispenser
Here’s the May 30 election snapshot,  a monthly look at how municipal candidates are distributed across our grand city.
Fourteen new candidates registered this month, in twelve wards.  Three candidates dropped out.
There are still four acclaimed candidates, two of which are incumbents: Peter Milczyn & Chin Lee.
HiMY SYeD dropped out of the ward 19 race, to run for mayor.
The highest number of candidates is ward 27 (Kyle Rae’s ward) with 13 candidates.  Want to meet them all?  A group called #VoteTO is hosting an “All Candidate Gameshow” on Thursday …

By Mark Kuznicki, ChangecampTO
A huge thank you to our sponsors (Toronto Public Library, Peapod Studios, Samara Canada, Ascentum, Microsoft and OSSTF District 12), our volunteers and our participants for an incredible start to our project to create a civic engagement toolkit and a self-organizing movement of people who create spaces for civic discourse, community dialogue and citizen action.
The event was called ChangeCampTO: Designing a Civic Engagement Toolkit and it took place Tuesday, February 16th at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library.

The event was envisioned as an opportunity to engage a diverse …

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 …

From Mondovile
Who will have the best social media strategy for the November 2010 Toronto municipal election?
Mayoral candidate George Smitherman is laying low until spring; Rocco Rossi can’t decide whether to tweet under his partisan @liberalrocco handle or go for @roccothevoteTO; Giorgio Mammoliti promises a “no-nonsense campaign” that probably has no role for a Twitter consultant.
Back when nobody was heeding much attention to these details, though, compulsively chronicling the 2006 vote via Web 2.0 was Himy Syed — who planted himself on the ballot of central-west downtown Ward 19 to watch …

By Carrie Brunet, InsideToronto
The Internet may be the last refuge of anonymity for many, but two local Toronto-boosters are hoping to make their site a place where neighbours meet and neighbourhoods grow.
Annex residents Himy Syed and Karen Sun have created Torontopedia.ca. The site, using similar technology to Wikipedia, allows users to add to or edit existing content online. The content is, of course, Toronto-centric.
“We ask that people use their real names,” said Syed. “You wouldn’t introduce yourself to a neighbour by saying ‘Hi, I’m CoolDude123.’”
Instead, Syed would like to see …

By The Mississauga Muse
This week in the Blog entry, “Who Runs this Town?” Announcement –City Idol documentary World Premiere” I shared a press release from the good folks at Who Runs this Town?
It began:
“For anyone who is interested in city politics, civic engagement, social exclusion and creative activism, this film is for you!
“City Idol” will have its world premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival…
and later stated:
“World Premiere: Thursday April 26th, 9:30pm. Royal Cinema”
Well, my husband and I decided to go see it. I went because some of the …

By CARRIE BRUNET, InsideToronto
cbrunet@insidetoronto.com
Incumbent Joe Pantalone took his ward by a landslide again this election, returning for a term that will see him serving nearly three decades in municipal politics.
In his last term, Pantalone was one of David Miller’s deputy mayors. He was also the city’s tree advocate and chaired the round table on the environment.
This time around Pantalone was challenged by newcomers George Sawision, Himy Syed and Nick Boragina.
Pantalone took the seat with 8,524 votes, followed by Sawision with 1,710 votes, Boragina with 511 votes and Syed with 403 …

By Marc Weisblott, The Globe and Mail
The cast and crew of the City Idol competition watched the Toronto municipal election results come in at Paupers Pub in the Annex, even if the television coverage hardly had the suspense of a World Cup match.
Citytv proclaimed David Miller’s re-election as soon as they signed on-air, and went to rival Jane Pitfield for an instantly incredulous reaction: “They’ve already decided on the winner?”
The effort to make no-contests like Kyle Rae’s inevitable victory in Toronto-Centre Rosedale sound suspenseful was a pretty fruitless allocation of CityNews resources, especially when …

By Marc Weisblott
The Globe and Mail
Himy Syed opened a campaign office in the storefront of the Metro Theatre (677 Bloor St. W.) because he figured it was the perfect place to advocate for the reunification of north and south Koreatown — two sides of the street that fall into two different electoral wards. Syed has claimed residence in about a dozen different parts of Toronto, ever since his family moved from the U.K., flipping houses that flipped them around the town. Being a local nomad comes naturally to …

Why Vote?
Video Produced by Who Runs This Town
Headshot photos by HiMY SYeD.

By Matthew Blackett, Spacing Votes

Himy Syed, a candidate in Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina, is opening his campaign office Sunday afternoon.
But it’s not your typical office — it’s located in the former Metro porn theatre on Bloor Street West, just east of Christie Street, in Little Korea [click here for a photo of theatre].
I suspect he’s the only candidate to have an office in a former porn theatre, but weirder things have happened in this election so far.

From CHIN Radio, October 28 , 8:45 am

HiMY SYeD – Radio Interview — CHIN Radio October 28 , 8:45 am

By CARRIE BRUNET, InsideToronto
cbrunet@insidetoronto.com
Few candidates have chosen to run in Ward 19 held by incumbent and deputy mayor Joe Pantalone.
Pantalone has been the councillor in the area for more than 25 years. For the last term he has been the city’s tree advocate and has worked to establish the Johnny Lombardi Memorial on College Street.
Also running in the ward this election is, U.K.-born, Himy Syed.
In his own words, Syed is an ‘artist, community and anti-war activist, author and civil rights activist, interest-free banker, photojournalist and photoblogger.’
George Sawision, is …

By Kevin Bracken, Torontoist
The Toronto Public Space Committee’s excellent new Municipal Elections website contains a veritable treasure trove of information about each candidate in the 2006 election (and a pretty sexy Google maps mashup).
The site also features sometimes-hilarious quotations from and anecdotes about our to-be-elected officials in poster format.
We have selected some gems from the site for your reading pleasure:
Ward 20: “[Adam Vaughan] is on record as wanting to gate alleyways in the ward, including Graffiti Alley, and ban the sale of art supplies to minors.”
Ward 19: “Joe [Pantalone] had no problem with …

By Matthew Blackett, Spacing Votes

Himy Syed, a candidate in Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina, has started a Flickr photo group that pools together images from this election.
If you have a Flickr account, you can add your photos to it.
Himy has also created a Toronto election group on You Tube to collect videos captured during the campaign trail.

By KAREN MACKENZIE, Spacing Votes

The addictive potential of last week’s Nuit Blanche now leaves me in withdrawal. I polled candidates in wards 18, 19, 20, and 21, in hopes I could live vicariously through their tales of the all-night art party’s witching hour.
Everyone who responded vowed to support the event for another year.
Himy Syed, a candidate running in Ward 19 Trinity-Spadina, had the most enthusiastic response by far (editor’s disclaimer: Syed contributes to Spacing Photos regularly). At the witching hour, Syed was atop the CN Tower with a photoblogger crew. He posted a …