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tariqata said:
This makes perfect sense - but I'm not sure that I understand why it makes sense for Thomson to run (bizarrely) for mayor herself instead of just campaigning for John Tory, apart from her apparent desire to be at the centre of a spectacle.
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I believe that Thomson really thinks (as nutty as it sounds) that she'll gain enough support in her campaign that when she feels it's time, she'll ask her supporters to vote for Tory instead. Plus, you can tell she really likes being in the spotlight and getting media attention.
 
the lemur said:
Yep, bad Scrabble/Scarborough pun. Idiot doesn't even realize Scrabble is a *board* game.
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Scrabble doesn't sound anything like Scarborough, and Scrabble is American. Maybe he thinks Olivia wants to go to Scarborough Fair like in the Simon and Garfunkel song and uh there are card games played there? Or she wants to ditch the subway expansion plan like it was a high-stakes poker game? I don't see what's racist about the tweet. The tweet itself makes no sense! The author is trying to make some negative point about Chow but nobody knows what he means.
 
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the lemur said:
Was she really that close to the Libs before?
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She dropped out last time and supported Smitherman, and it's fairly plausible that she got the 2011 nomination in T-S as a quid pro quo for dropping out. She did okay in 2011, but the provincial riding association was not keen to repeat the experience, it seems.
 
Joe Pantalone: A "spoiler" candidate?

W. K. Lis said:

MAYOR - City of Toronto 2010
1870 of 1870 Polls Reporting
​
CandidateTotal votes% of
total votes
Rob Ford38350147.114%
George Smitherman28983235.607%
Joe Pantalone9548211.73%
Rocco Rossi50120.616%
George Babula32730.402%
Rocco Achampong28050.345%
Abdullah-Baquie Ghazi27610.339%
Michael Alexander24700.303%
Vijay Sarma22640.278%
Sarah Thomson18830.231%

Note to Sarah Thomson, forget about it.
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WKL: Interesting 2010 Election results for Mayor of Toronto...

Noting Joe Pantalone's total - I must ask: Would Smitherman have had a chance to be elected Mayor if Joe Pantalone have not run?

Was Pantalone a so-called "spoiler" giving Rob Ford the victory?

As we know strong third party candidates can allow another major candidate to win by diluting the vote...like Ralph Nader did to Al Gore
in the US 2000 Presidential Election giving the win to George W. Bush...

LI MIKE
 
presuming 100% of Pantalone's votes had gone to Smitherman, he would have won by only 1,813 votes. In reality that wouldn't have occured, and even if just 2,000 of Pantalone's votes had gone to Ford instead you would have seen Ford still pull a win.
 
innsertnamehere said:
presuming 100% of Pantalone's votes had gone to Smitherman, he would have won by only 1,813 votes. In reality that wouldn't have occured, and even if just 2,000 of Pantalone's votes had gone to Ford instead you would have seen Ford still pull a win.
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Actually, its if 1,000 (actually 907) votes had gone to Ford instead of Smitherman, Ford would still have won.
If 2,000 votes stayed home, Ford would still have won.
 
I do not know what Sarah Thomson's strategy is but from my point of view she is no Tory clone. If her only objective is to bring attention to the lack of funding for transit expansion, she's doing a great job, and I respect her for that.

One of the top deciding factors for my vote, just after making sure Ford isn't reelected, will be to vote for someone with a convincing plan to raise lots of money for transit, and in this way she has clearly differentiated herself. In this race, unlike the last one, she is not alone - Soknacki says we need revenue tools - so my support is not guaranteed. But all the mainstream candidates including Chow and Tory are, as usual, disappointingly noncommittal.
 
the lemur said:
Yep, bad Scrabble/Scarborough pun. Idiot doesn't even realize Scrabble is a *board* game.
Click to expand...

That was supposed to be Scrabble? As a Brit who has played Scrabble and have lived around Chinese people for much of my life, I didn't get this so-called joke. I mean, if you're going to tell a racist joke, at least have it make sense. Also, if you're going to respond "haha lol", probably best not to do it publicly as the authorised representative of a candidate for one of the biggest political jobs in a G8 nation, cos... well, if you need this explained to you, I'm not sure how to help you.
 
calimehtar said:
I do not know what Sarah Thomson's strategy is but from my point of view she is no Tory clone. If her only objective is to bring attention to the lack of funding for transit expansion, she's doing a great job, and I respect her for that.
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Really? Those who actually follow Toronto politics may know about Thomson's transit focus, but most people will remain unaware of her. The majority of those who do see anything about her will come away knowing that she arrived in a horse & carriage to register as a candidate, and maybe that Rob Ford grabber her ass and that she says crazy things sometimes.

calimehtar said:
One of the top deciding factors for my vote, just after making sure Ford isn't reelected, will be to vote for someone with a convincing plan to raise lots of money for transit, and in this way she has clearly differentiated herself. In this race, unlike the last one, she is not alone - Soknacki says we need revenue tools - so my support is not guaranteed. But all the mainstream candidates including Chow and Tory are, as usual, disappointingly noncommittal.
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I'm right there with you! I want to pay for transit with my taxes - including transit I'm likely never to use. That's how my preferred society works, after all. I strongly suspect that Chow is playing her [Scrabble] cards close to her chest and is actually quite pro-revenue, but to come out and say that right now would be an absolute gift from her to her opponents ("Look! The socialist wants to tax & spend, tax & spend!")
 
SecretSquirrel said:
That was supposed to be Scrabble? As a Brit who has played Scrabble and have lived around Chinese people for much of my life, I didn't get this so-called joke. I mean, if you're going to tell a racist joke, at least have it make sense. Also, if you're going to respond "haha lol", probably best not to do it publicly as the authorised representative of a candidate for one of the biggest political jobs in a G8 nation, cos... well, if you need this explained to you, I'm not sure how to help you.
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I've lived among Brits for a large part of my life and I'm familiar with what a word like Scrabble becomes when pronounced by native speakers of languages that don't have consonant clusters/don't have all the same sounds as English. I got the joke* but it seemed exceedingly feeble, not least because this Chopowick character totally bungled the facts about what Scrabble is (unless he meant that as further indications of Chow's supposed cluelessness, but that would be very convoluted).

Also, Olivia's accent is nowhere near that strong, regardless of Ford Nation Twitter trolls who claim not to be able to understand her. She enunciates better than Ford, for one thing.

And yes, Baldauf seems to have no qualms about publicly abetting low blows administered to Stintz' opponents and generally being a weasel.


*At first, the mentions of 'British', 'Scarborough' and 'card game' transported my thoughts to the Yorkshire coast and Lake Ontario toponyms borrowed from there, and I thought 'Is he doing some kind of complex allusion to Whitby and whist?'. (I'm good at creating tenous links ...).
 
SecretSquirrel said:
Really? Those who actually follow Toronto politics may know about Thomson's transit focus, but most people will remain unaware of her. The majority of those who do see anything about her will come away knowing that she arrived in a horse & carriage to register as a candidate, and maybe that Rob Ford grabber her ass and that she says crazy things sometimes.



I'm right there with you! I want to pay for transit with my taxes - including transit I'm likely never to use. That's how my preferred society works, after all. I strongly suspect that Chow is playing her [Scrabble] cards close to her chest and is actually quite pro-revenue, but to come out and say that right now would be an absolute gift from her to her opponents ("Look! The socialist wants to tax & spend, tax & spend!")
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Tolls for transit was the only remarkable issue in her platform last election, and it has been the target of all her publicity stunts thus far, with the possible exception of the dreadlocks. If people are unaware of her platform it is not her fault, and not for lack of trying. If her only goal was to attract attention to herself, as people say, she would have more of a bread and circuses platform like Ford or Rossi - subways for free, finish the Spadina Expressway underground, etc.
 
Right now, the only campaign that is scrabbling is Stintz's. Seriously, someone should deliver a copy of the *board* game to Baldauf, c/o The Karen Stintz for Mayor campaign, with that message.

Baldauf is riding the Stintz train about the same way Wormington is riding Ford's. They're hoping against hope their hero wins, because they know they're essentially unemployable if their hero doesn't win.
 
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