You Can't Fight City Hall

Nor, it seems, can you change the makeup of City Council. In the Toronto election it was, as usual, the incumbents who were mostly returned to their seats. It's next to impossible for a challenger to win against an incumbent at the municipal level. The field is opened up only when an incumbent retires, then the new elected official has that seat for as long as he or she wants. In one of the open races, the candidate who won is a television journalist. This, I think, is an unfair advantage over other hopefuls who don't have the same visibility.

The person I voted for as mayor came in second last. My choices for both councillor and school trustee ran a distant second. Once someone gets a municipal office, they can pretty well do anything they want and still get returned time after time. Like a councillor who showed up drunk at a hockey game, acting rude and obnoxious, swearing and insulting everyone around him. Later he lied and said he was never there, but confessed when pressured about it. Did he get voted off city council? You guessed it - he coasted back to victory.

But if I was disappointed at the Toronto results, journalist Christopher Hume was downright despondent. He called the Toronto voters "dangerously contented" and even though they seemed to want change, opted "for the same old, same old." He even goes as far as to question why we bother voting. There were however a few upsets in the municipalities surrounding Toronto. Jim Coyle of the Toronto Star viewed this as a "fine mix of the old and new."

Nothing has changed much since 1982 when I ran for school trustee myself. I ran against a lady who had been acclaimed several times and now was miffed because she had to get campaign literature printed. She needn't have bothered; she kicked my ass. People told me that you have to get your name in the news and it doesn't matter whether it's for something good or bad.

Maybe I'll resurrect my political career yet. I'll knock off a few banks, engage the police in a high-speed chase and consign my stolen car to a watery demise in Lake Ontario. Then run for Prime Minister.