The latest polls on Toronto’s mayoral election place the city’s incumbent mayor, Rob Ford, in second. Not only is Ford, who is famous the world over for admitting to using crack while in office, running for reëlection on October 27th, he appeared in one poll to have closed the gap on the front-runner, making it a real possibility that he could continue to rule North America’s fourth-largest city.
It is one thing for a politician to spectacularly unravel while in office, and quite another for voters to want more. And yet Ford bobbleheads are selling well in Toronto. Everyone wants a Ford selfie. At his rallies, adoring crowds chant, “Ford More Years.” We’ve become a city with an addiction of our own.
The Ford saga began in May, 2013, when stories broke alleging that the Mayor had smoked crack cocaine. The journalists Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan, of the Toronto Star, and John Cook, the editor of Gawker, reported that they’d viewed a cell-phone video of Ford inhaling what appeared to be crack cocaine. An accompanying photo showed Ford with three suspected gang members, one of whom was murdered just weeks after the video was shot.
Ford was indignant. He denied the allegation. He stormed around City Hall. He lambasted journalists, calling the media a “bunch of maggots.” “I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine,” he said at a press conference. “As for a video, I cannot comment on a video that I have never seen or does not exist.”
A little later: “There’s no video, so that’s all I can say.”
Except there was a video, as Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair confirmed in October. And there is an extortion case, as police investigate whether Ford’s close friend, occasional driver, and alleged drug dealer threatened two suspected gang members in an attempt to retrieve the famous crack video. In November, Ford finally admitted to smoking crack in a “drunken stupor”—and in the ten months since, Ford has frequently repeated a dizzying deny-deny-apologize pattern, bullying his opponents throughout.
Sometimes he even found himself apologizing for the way he had denied. During a live press conference, he disputed allegations, contained in a court filing, that he had harassed a former staff member while drunk. Clad in a Toronto Argonauts football jersey, he told reporters, “It says I wanted to eat her pussy.... I have never said that in my life to her. I would never do that. I’m happily married. I’ve got more than enough to eat at home.” Later in the day, he met the press again to lament the use of his “unforgiveable language.” His wife, Renata, made a rare appearance at his side.
Ford briefly went to rehab and later blamed his drinking for all of his offensive behavior, which spanned a history of homophobic, misogynist, and racist comments. (In the crack video, he refers to children he was coaching at football as “fucking minorities.”)
None of this has diminished the support of his most ardent fans, who refer to themselves as members of Ford Nation and parrot Ford’s assertions that as mayor he has lowered taxes and stopped the city’s runaway gravy train. (That these claims have been thoroughly debunked has failed to impress them.) Recently, Ford Nation was out in full force at the Mayor’s annual barbecue—dubbed, naturally, Ford Fest. So insane has Toronto become that his fellow mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson, whose campaign has included a parody of a Pitbull and Ke$ha music video, barely turned heads when she rode into the event astride a white horse, a red scarf holding back her long dreads.*
More noteworthy to members of Ford Nation was the handful of L.G.B.T.Q. protesters who had come to demonstrate at Ford Fest. (Ford has refused to attend pride events.) A group of the Mayor’s supporters surrounded the men and women, some yelling slurs like “faggot,” and ripping up their protest signs. Ford’s brother, Doug, a city councillor and the Mayor’s campaign manager and No. 1 defender, later told a Toronto Star reporter that a man with a rainbow flag draped over his shoulder had baited the crowd. “I apologize to him for what happened but you can’t go into any event, a sporting event even, taunting people,” he said. “Something’s going to happen.”
But no, that isn’t what usually happens at an event filled with Torontonians, at least not before we lost our collective minds. Toronto is generally an inclusive city. We hosted the World Pride Parade this summer, and Canada’s first legal same-sex marriage, which was recognized in 2003, took place here.
Ford’s defenders see his flaws as regular-guy problems, and they appreciate his common touches, like the point he makes of returning citizens’ phone calls. After a teacher (known in the media as the “shirtless jogger”) confronted Ford during a chance encounter at a parade this summer, Doug went so far as to suggest that the Mayor was a victim, and that the teacher was in fact a racist. “When you’re going after one person, it doesn’t have to be about religion, it doesn’t have to be about race,” he told reporters. “You can be racist against people that eat little red apples. You can be racist against people that have a drinking problem. You can be racist against people that are too fat.”
They say politics is theatre—and, indeed, “Rob Ford the Musical: Birth of a Ford Nation” débuts in Toronto on September 16th. But the past year and a half has been beyond theatre. It has been reality TV: Honey Boo Boo and the Kardashians dragged onto the set of “Intervention.”
Toronto has had many nicknames over the years: Toronto the Good, Hogtown, Hollywood North, T-Dot, and, quite recently, from the rapper Drake, the Six (likely a riff on our area code, 416). And then there’s one from Robyn Doolittle, the reporter who helped break the crack-video story. Her book about the Mayor was called “Crazy Town.” With all due respect to Drake, I think that she nailed it.
*Update, 1 P.M.: Sarah Thomson announced Tuesday morning that she is withdrawing from the race, saying she would support whichever candidate running against Ford “is in the lead the day before the election.”