HiMY SYeD

Going for him: SYeD ran in 2010 and has remained a constant fixture at events and gatherings around the city.

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 John Michael McGrath, Toronto Life
One of the much talked-about aspects of Calgary’s recent election has been how Naheed Nenshi successfully transformed social media, Twitter especially, into a campaign tool. Compare that innovation with how Toronto’s candidates have been using social media, and our mayoral hopefuls do not come out looking great. Yes, all of the major candidates—and most of the minor ones—have been using Twitter and Facebook. But no, it hasn’t mattered a lot. If Web smarts had been a major force in this campaign, we’d all be asking ourselves if prolific …

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 …

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 …

Yesterday was a decisive day in the 2010 campaign for mayor of Toronto because September 13th will be seen as the moment we finally achieved critical mass for crazy. In taking the battle for the Spadina Expressway underground, Rocco Rossi firmly confirmed his divisive status, going for broke with a full frontal assault on the downtown core in an effort to endear himself to those dwelling both physically and psychologically in Ford Country. We wish Mr. Rossi well in whatever future endeavours he pursues after …

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.

…bad sign on the door of the Danforth Music Hall. Looks like the 90-year-old venue is in a spot of shutdown trouble. (h/t HiMYSYeD).

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 …

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!

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 JOHN LORINC, Spacing Votes
In a lunchtime speech to the Empire Club at the Royal York today, mayoral hopeful Rocco Rossi laid out some of the key planks of his platform — promises that will likely set the tone and the dynamic of the race to come.
He vowed to cancel all future bike lanes on major arterial roads, including Jarvis Street, and complete the balance of the city’s cycling plan on residential or secondary streets. He also promised to review existing bike lanes on arterials.
As for Transit City, Rossi condemned …

By Kelly Anderson, blogTO
Rocco Rossi was the first in line to file his papers to run for mayor of Toronto. In his subsequent press conference, he billed himself as the “big, bald” mayoral candidate who wanted to cut the mayor’s salary and sell off Toronto Hydro. Despite the splashy debut, many Torontonians don’t know much about the east end-raised Rossi, who once kayaked 490 km from Toronto to Ottawa to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, of which he was formerly the …

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 John Lorinc, Spacing Votes
LeDrew, two?
In the week since Rocco Rossi joined the mayoral race as a potential spoiler, there’s been much speculation about whether he represents something more substantive than Stephen LeDrew, another former Liberal Party bagman who made a spectacle of himself in the 2006 race.
After Rossi’s kick-off, one right-of-centre councilor came away unpersuaded that he’s different than the other backroomers — LeDrew, Tom Long, John Tory — who believed they could make the transition from handler to handled.
I’m prepared to reserve judgment…but not for long. On the weekend, I spoke …