Mayor

[bcholmes]

Toronto has a new mayor. And it's not Ben Kerr. Poor Ben came in with a trivial 294 votes. (For those of you who don't live in Toronto, Ben is a street busker -- a bit long in the tooth -- who sings hurtin' songs on the corner of Bloor and Yonge. He runs for mayor every election).

Toronto has, once again, leaned to the left. Our new mayor is David Miller, an NDP politician.

CityTV's political specialist, Adam Vaughn (whom I admire) suggested that City Council has picked up 4 more leftists, and a bunch of centrists. The right isn't currently popular, it seems. On the other hand, John Tory got scaringly close to winning.

I'm quite excited about the new mayor -- I, myself, had never voted for Mel Lastman -- but I'm kinda sad to see Barbara Hall so roundly defeated.

Comments

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Barbara Hall's presence in debates and on television was really damaging to any possibility of her winning. She just spoke so poorly. I saw some of the debates with her, and not only were the 'intangibles' like her vocal quality grating, but she constantly interrupted the other candidates, nagged them with empty but flashy-sounding invectives, got personal, raised her voice a lot, etc. It was terrible -- she seemed to be yammering. I never got a good grasp of what she was trying to express, and a lot of her time seemed to be wasted on making aspersions about the other candidates rather than presenting herself.