Why the repeated attacks on Olivia Chow just make the other mayoral candidates look silly

There was a segment in last week’s Toronto Star debate — in which I was the moderator — that I found telling about this moment in the mayoral election campaign. I invited each of the candidates to choose one other candidate and ask them one question. Four candidates, out of the six onstage, not only chose to direct their queries to Olivia Chow, but offered slight variations on the same question: How much, exactly, are you going to raise property taxes?

Chow repeatedly said she thought it was backwards to pick a number, because you should make the budget and see what other revenue sources add up to before setting the tax rate. She promised only that any increase would be “modest.”

The others went to town, piling on to accuse her of secretly planning “rocket”-like tax hikes.

This was revealing for a few reasons.

First, because obviously all of the other candidates have determined that their hopes rest entirely on attacking Chow, and attacking her on this specific point about potential tax increases. (Why else would Brad Bradford, who asked his question last, go ahead and repeat the same question three others had asked before him — acknowledging it was getting crazily repetitive?)

It’s not hard to see why: the latest Forum poll only shows more of what every other poll has shown over the past several weeks: Olivia Chow’s support continues to inch up, now to about 38 per cent of decided voters, nearly tripling the support of anyone else in the race. All of the rest of them — Mark Saunders, Josh Matlow, Ana Bailão, Anthony Furey, Mitzie Hunter and Brad Bradford — are clustered way behind, either in single digits or fighting to stay above the margin of error of single digits. At first it seemed like one or two of the others must be likely to emerge as main contenders, but time is running out — election day is in three weeks and early voting begins Thursday. Now it seems just as likely Chow cruises to victory without the levels of support ever really changing.

So everyone was targeting Chow. Even Josh Matlow, the only other candidate not to ask her a direct question, referred to her in his closing statement, saying he respected her legacy but it was time for new leadership for today’s problems.

The second reason I found that question segment revealing was Chow’s reaction: she seemed to be having fun not giving those questioning her what they wanted. At first I and some observers I was talking to were wondering why she didn’t just disarm the whole enterprise by giving a number — saying “I cannot see a scenario where I’d increase taxes by more than nine per cent,” or whatever — leaving them to fumble around now that she’d given a firm answer that they claimed she wouldn’t give. But then I realized she must be happy to have them continue that line of attack, likely because she doesn’t believe she’s vulnerable to it.

My guess is the voters most concerned about the possibility she’d raise taxes aren’t likely to vote for her in any circumstances, and she’s concluded the voters she already has in her camp aren’t particularly concerned about the answer to that question. Either because they think tax rates should be higher, or because they simply trust her to do the right thing.

So her playful counterpunches (“I’ll give you a number: Zero. Zero shovels in the ground under your Housing Now program”) while dodging the precise question were just invitations for them to keep obsessing about the same old thing. Like a rabbit whose antagonists keep throwing her in the briar patch — oh no! Whatever will she do?

And that leads to my third observation about that moment, and the state of the campaign so far: Olivia Chow has succeeded thus far, to a certain extent, by avoiding being pinned down to specifics. She has a platform with substantive proposals in it, but to the extent she’s seemed vulnerable at all, it’s been where her math doesn’t seem to add up and where the specifics of what she’s banking on don’t align with recently revealed reality (as with the revenue she’s anticipated from a vacancy tax).

In the meantime, she’s winning so far based on goodwill from voters who believe they know her values and experience, and trust her as a person based on those things. She keeps winning based on projecting a caring, calm and unconcerned attitude — projecting good vibes. Maybe she doesn’t win if she lets herself be drawn into a nitpicking contest.

I have no doubt this is driving some of the other candidates bonkers. Matlow and Hunter each have, arguably, more detailed and carefully costed platforms, armed with pages of spreadsheets. Bailão and Saunders are also running to some extent on personal credibility — Bailão as a neutral good negotiator on the city’s behalf with less partisan baggage, Saunders as a police chief who assumes expertise on public safety — and don’t have voters showing the same kind of willingness to just take their word for things. Bradford is …well, authenticity hasn’t been his strong suit in this campaign, so let’s leave him aside, even as it appears Anthony Furey’s campaign might be shoving him aside and coming for Saunders’s votes too.

The point here is that so far, a growing plurality of people seem to be ready to vote for Chow based on liking and trusting her. And her unwillingness to be nailed down on specifics — on tax rates, but maybe on other practical questions too — hasn’t been much of a factor in that, even as the others have obsessed about it for weeks.

Time is running out, but things could still happen: a week is an eternity in politics and so on — you know the clichés as well as I do. But in order for something to change, you have to think maybe someone will need to do something different.

Asking the same question over and over and expecting a different response just seems, past a certain point, silly. And frankly, silliness isn’t a quality most of us are looking for in a mayor.

Edward Keenan is a Toronto-based city columnist for the Star. Reach him via email: ekeenan@thestar.ca