The antics of Toronto’s controversial mayor have divided the city, following calls for him to stand down after admitting to smoking crack cocaine while in office.
Rob Ford’s uproariously inappropriate behaviour has included public inebriety; making racist and sexist remarks; talking on a mobile phone while driving and raising his middle finger to the motorist who reported him; and booting the only woman off his executive committee, among a plethora of increasingly dubious decisions.
However, it seems that there remains a significant chance that he may be re-elected in 2014, with 42 per cent of Toronto’s voters polling in his favour.
In May 2013, rumours of the existence of a video showing Ford smoking crack cocaine swam to the fore in Canada’s media. Ford’s initial reaction was to tell his aides not to worry about it, since he was well aware of where the videotape was located – before proceeding to blurt out the address of a known crack den.
Eventually, Ford admitted to the media that he had used crack cocaine sometime in 2012. Why had he denied it before? “You didn’t ask the correct questions.”
“Have you smoked crack cocaine?” reporters outside his office asked him in November.
“Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine,” he admitted. “Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Um, probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably about a year ago.”
Despite a long and eventful saga of headline antics on the part of Toronto’s mayor, a recent Forum Research survey of 1,049 of the city’s voters showed that 42 per cent of participants approve of the job that Ford has done so far.
Ford has played the role of a comedian in office, making slapstick gestures, but somehow managing to retain a lot of the people’s support, despite calls for his resignation and a forced delegation of duties to deputy mayor Norm Kelly.
“There are people in the city who identify with Rob Ford as an everyman, who think people are out to get him,” said Nelson Wiseman, politics professor at the University of Toronto. “Taxes aren’t going up and he cut spending by the city, so they cut him some slack on other things.” He adds: “I think he could easily get re-elected.”
