Does the Campaign have to be this long…?

We’ve been innundated with polls over the past week or so about the municipal election here in Toronto, which takes place a week from now. One radio station commissioned a poll and actually stretched the results out over a week, focusing one day on which of the candidates you’d prefer to have a beer with.

Enough already. There is so much voter apathy in this city that it’s difficult to put much stock in the polls. After all, we can expect that well less than 50% of eligible voters will bother. That includes some who have opinions as well as those who aren’t even aware there is an election on.

What’s with the length of our municipal campaigns? It seems to me that we manage to have federal election campaigns in really compressed periods of time, something like a month and a half. We’ve been listening to candidates for mayor for months and months and months now. I’m about done with it. How many debates have they had? It seems like there have been dozens. There have been so many debates that there have been times with multiple debates scheduled for the same night, causing some candidates to pack up and leave one debate to move on to a better one.

So now we’re down to three candidates and if the polls are indicating anywhere near accurately, it’s close between Mr. Smitherman and Mr. Ford, with Mr. Pantalone well behind. The election may well be decided by the ability of the candidates to actually get their supporters out to the polls.

I’ve mentioned on this blog that I’m not thrilled with any of the candidates running for mayor, and I feel the same way about the candidates running in my ward for councillor. The one good thing is that there are some councillors retiring this year, and a couple running for mayor, so we’re going to see at least some change in the council make-up by default. If we’re fortunate, a few incumbents will fall and overall we’ll have a council with a significant amount of new blood.

On the whole, I think the last council was weak. They didn’t manage very effectively, and their activities as a group were puncuated by unprofessional, immature, petulant and sometimes bizarre behaviour. My advice to voters is to consider not voting for the incumbant. Let’s get some new blood in there, some new ideas, hopes and dreams.

Update

We  attended an all candidates meeting in our ward tonight. As you know from this blog (and this post, above), I’ve expressed some frustration at not finding a candidate I can fully back, but to be honest I may have been unfair in my blanket criticism. I’m going to say that after watching the candidates in my ward in action, I think we do have some quality candidates running. They’re intelligent, articulate, and passionate and all of them have some strengths.

I still can’t say that one particular candidate has everything I’m looking for and I’m going to have to decide which of the candidates on the whole will provide the best representation for our ward. I’m getting there. I did hear a few things I didn’t like at the meeting tonight, including a thing or two I really didn’t like and I’m going to have to weigh those comments carefully.

Related Articles

• Poll finds Ford, Smitherman now tied (thestar.com)
• Ford has narrow lead, but soft Pantalone support could tip scales toward Smitherman (theglobeandmail.com)
• Joe Pantalone, running a distant third, likely to determine outcome of mayoral race (theglobeandmail.com)
• Poll: ‘Ford phenomenon’ faltering (thestar.com)
• Smitherman and Ford neck-and-neck in new poll (thestar.com)