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Duly Quoted: Rob Ford

By Torontoist

“Tonight the city of Toronto is not divided. We are united.”
—Rob Ford, speaking at his victory party, after winning the mayor’s race on Monday night. Full results, including ward-by-ward results for councillors and trustees, are here; our collected live coverage is here.

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  • http://undefined Moonmoth

    United? Hmmmmm well that’s an interesting way to look at it. Maybe he means his own uniting with many of those KFC double downs during trips to the US eh Slobfattyford? #mayorslobford #mayordoubledown

  • http://undefined Moonmoth

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKPDlRLWKw
    Rob Ford, HIs Worship, Mayor of Toronto: “I can’t support bike lanes, how many people are riding outside today? We don’t live in Florida”.

  • http://undefined Aecyl

    Seeing as how Ford has won with less than fifty per cent of the vote (which represents about fifty per cent of Torontonians), I would say that Ford is wrong in thinking Toronto is united. (The numbers certainly won’t change all too much.) If anything, the larger portion of Toronto is united against him.

  • http://undefined thickslab

    Tonight the City of Toronto is divided .. into idiots and people who voted against Ford.

  • http://undefined s’rose

    yes, the city of Toronto is united. United because we know that the greatness we are is not understood or treasured. United because we have festival in our hearts, art in the way we move, we are resourceful, determined. So get out the graffiti, make art in the streets, write poems, make the music, make films, photos, videos, care about the font on the ttc, know that bikes make a difference, that the joy and love we feel for this great city is now alerted, honed and ready. Yeah, I feel united in a whole new way.

  • http://undefined Jim Beam

    Having spent the last eight years living under the jack boot of David Miller and his band of Socialist nogoodniks, I am happy to report that happy days are here again. Now that we have taken back the reigns of power at City Hall, I will no longer grace the pages of the Torontoist. So to those of you with whom I have sparred with over the past year, I say good-bye and good luck. While you are licking your wounds and preparing for the hurt that is headed your way, I will be enjoying life in the inner suburbs resting assured knowing that all is right with the world again.

  • http://undefined thickslab

    What’s it like being stupid?

  • http://www.sayitwithpie.com Karen Whaley

    I will be enjoying life in the inner suburbs resting assured knowing that all is right with the world again.
    Bahahahahaha! Have fun with that.

  • http://undefined Moonmoth

    Suburbs = slums of the future.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    No Ford, we really aren’t. I’m very sorry to break the news to you.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Moonmoth, you’re just as helpful as Jim Beam with your brilliant generalizations.

  • http://undefined Matthew

    Reminds me of George W. Bush saying that he was a “uniter not a divider” just before he became one of the most dividing Presidents in US history.
    It would be great if Rob Ford could reach compromises in city hall to work with city council, but based on his history, I doubt that will be the case. Unfortunately, I think we will see a very divided Toronto and city hall in the next 4 years, where very little gets done.

  • http://undefined Halfwit

    Either voters had a change of heart at the voting booth, or most people out there are talking out of both sides of their mouths.
    This is going to be fun to watch.

  • http://undefined deadrobot

    Who let the rambling yokel in?

  • http://undefined Vincent Clement

    Thing is, a mayor in Ontario has no additional powers. He is but one vote of 45. Any powers beyond those in the Municipal Act and the City of Toronto Act were given by Council. Said council can take them away.
    Sure, a mayor can use the bully pulpit to embarrass councillors, but for all intents and purposes, this is hardly a divided council. It takes a mere 23 votes (less if not a full council) to get things done. It’s not like Ford or any mayor can ‘veto’ motions.

  • http://piorkowski.ca/ qviri

    He’s right. We’re all fucked.

  • http://undefined Colin

    People really have a hard time coming to grips with reality don’t they?
    Just face up to it. Rob Ford appealed more to Torontonians than any of the other options did. Maybe having a conversation with people who don’t simply reaffirm your existing beliefs would have let you see this coming. Of course, that means you’d have to try harder to break out of the US-style Michael Moore/Glen Beck discussions you like to have here.
    In 2003 David Miller won with just 43% of the vote on a 38% turnout. I bet you weren’t calling it a majority of voters uniting against Miller then did you?
    Rather than cry and whine about losing an election fairly, it would be more productive to take a hard objective look and figure out why Ford won and what lessons can be learned from it.
    While you do that I’ll rejoice that those who waste my money on buying off the union hordes got their asses handed to them…at least for one day anyway.

  • http://undefined friend68

    My view is that in a democratic system like ours, you need to convince the other folks that you’re right. Not yourself. Not your own supporters.
    Those folks who thought that Ford was the devil and that everything was fine just didn’t do a good enough job convincing the other side that they were right.
    Only time will tell if they were, but in the meantime, why not take some time away from calling those that don’t agree with you idiots and other derogatory names, and look at the reasons why your arguments weren’t convincing enough.

  • http://undefined linnyqat

    Seeing this kind of angry, sophomoric rhetoric from the left is as depressing as it is to see it from the right.

  • http://undefined linnyqat

    Though I am vehemently opposed to Rob Ford and his ideology, I agree with everything you’ve said here, and it is a totally fair comment. Having said that, I am soooo depressed today. Sigh. But it’s obvious that a lot of people weren’t happy with how things were going, so… [shrug]. Democracy. Sometimes it’s a thing to rejoice in, sometimes it’s a thing you have to live with. Cheers.

  • http://piorkowski.ca/ qviri

    It’s funny because you’ve never seen real socialists.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    Exactly. Ford is going to be a nightmare, but politicians are representative of us all, our attitudes in general, our conduct. If you don’t like Ford, spend the next four years making his life hell, do all the things he hates. He wants to make the streets spotless? Up the ante and make that very expensive prospect by spray painting beautiful graffiti over every inch of this city. Do you ride your bike to work? If not, start. Embrace the immigrants that help keep this city running and make it better. Ride the streetcars, organize runs and rallies in the streets. Hold art exhibits, make art everywhere, get even more creative with it and start putting it in the streets. Let’s make PRIDE even bigger these next four years than it has ever been, shove it right in this SOB’s face. Make it known to him that this is OUR city, it’s run by us and we utilize representatives like him to do the things WE believe are right and best for us all. Oppose him every time he does something we don’t like, make it very difficult for Ford to be a bigoted, dishonest fuck up. He can’t do anything without us, without the support of our councillors, without aligning himself with OUR ideals, let’s make sure he knows that. He’s a politician, but without the support of his constituents he’s nothing mroe than a raving lunatic waving his arms in the air, yelling yet not being heard.
    Toronto is awesome, it will be more awesome in the future, with or without Ford.

  • http://undefined rek

    I haven’t seen voter turn out numbers yet, but I’d wager nearly half of Toronto doesn’t give a crap who the mayor is. Now there’s some unity.

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    “…how many people are riding outside today? We don’t live in Florida”.

    “And even if we did, how can you drink and drive without a car? Drink and bike? Gimme a break, you’d hurt yourself,” the future mayor did not go on to say.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    Sweet, bye bye now.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    I’ll rejoice in the fact that ford can’t do a fucking thing. He’s as useless as everyone has purported him to be and will never get the support of council. Your comment is unrealistic and way off base; glenn Beck is a rightwing loser in the US, ford has aligned himself with glenn beck by makign the ignorant comments he has made and even making his signs look liek republican election signs in the US. This forum hardly has right wing, fundamentalist conversations, except when ford supporters come in. Also, those claims ford made abotu the corruption at city hall were ALL uncorroborated, when asked to produce evidence, ford had none, whaty makes you think he’s now going to stop anything? I’ll rejoice in the fact that Toronto is still owned by its citizens and we’ll do everythign in our power to make sure it remains a place of free expression, reasonable minds, creativity, a place for cyclists and streetcars, for immigrants, that there’s a place and help for the disadvantaged among us and a great place for investment. Despite what ford wants.
    Be careful what you wish for ford, you just might get it. Toronto will not lay down and die.

  • Mark Ostler

    About 53 percent, up from about 39 percent in the 2006 election.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    What is to be done when the other side won’t listen to reason? what then friend?

  • http://undefined EricSmith

    …Ford has won with less than fifty per cent of the vote…

    Don’t be ridiculous: Ford has more than 47% of the vote. This is not one of those perversely counter-intuitive outcomes that doesn’t seem to match the will of the majority.

    Look at Ford’s goofball subway plan alone, with its imaginary funding and heavy rail on the elevated Scarborough RT guideway, and consider: half of last night’s voters thought, “This man has good ideas.”

    Turnout, by the way, was also just barely under 50%. A quarter of the adult citizens of Toronto fell for a populist blow-hard with no platform beyond angry sound bites.

  • http://undefined linnyqat

    Rant at them histrionically and write them off as moronic suburbanites who have less claim to the city than you do?

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Oh snap, no you did not!

  • http://undefined quickymgee

    This is the saddest aspect out of this whole thing, i said before the election “if people actually vote ford in for mayor i’m going to be really disappointed with the people of this city”. Apparently a huge number of people who live in this city and went through our public education system aren’t capable of critical or rational thought. Thanks guys and gals, whoever you are that voted for Ford you’ve really lowered my expectations of my fellow citizens!

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Except that, as it appears you’re not ready to digest, the new council will be rightward of the outgoing council. Until you factor that into your political calculus, you’re going to be missing the bigger picture (as you have thus far).

  • http://undefined torontothegreat

    lmao! +1

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    :D yz.

  • http://piorkowski.ca/ qviri

    Look at Ford’s goofball subway plan alone, with its imaginary funding and heavy rail on the elevated Scarborough RT guideway, and consider: half of last night’s voters thought, “This man has good ideas.”

    Or, perhaps more accurately, “I’d rather have sixty dollars and a politician who says he cares about my taxes than a realistic transit and budgetary campaign platform.”

  • http://undefined Mr. Tatulas

    “People of Toronto: today our city is not divided. Slightly less than half of us are united.”
    twitter.com/RobFrod

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    Talk shit to me all you want the fact remains: Ford is mayor and by all reasnable accounts he should not be.
    “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” ~Winston Churchill
    “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.” ~Oscar Wilde

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    I think you’re assuming you can see into the future, you have no idea how things will play out over the next 4 years, no more than anyoen else does.

  • http://undefined linnyqat

    Like many of you, I am depressed and angry about the results of last night’s election. It doesn’t seem possible that so many voters have such a diametrically opposed viewpoint to what I see so clearly from this perspective. It is sad to think that so many people think tax dollars in their pockets are worth more than the greater good for all who enjoy this city and its many pleasures.
    I still can’t stomach the notion of reading the gloating comments at the Star by all those angry people who have been predicting Ford’s victory for months. Though I was curious last night, I couldn’t make myself check the coverage on Sun TV. It’s salt in the wound to be sure.
    But here are a couple of things I also can’t stomach: demonizing the right, turning them into the Other, wailing and gnashing of teeth, spewing the same sort of hateful rhetoric that made me feel so defensive when I read it from the right. Closing our eyes and covering our ears and shouting “la la la I can’t hear you” at the thousands who voted for Ford, because they didn’t like the status quo. His numbers in both percentage and actual votes are way higher than Miller’s were, for both of his elections. Like it or not, he has been handed a mandate. We need to find the humanity in the other side, understand where their concerns lay, and work to find a common ground. It is short-sighted to assume the Ford administration will only survive four years.
    I hate it, but it’s the way it is. Let’s suck it up and move forward, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and try to see those we disagree with as human beings.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    No, I cannot see into the future, but I can look to political history generally to inform how the outcome of these political shifts do tend to unfold.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Pretty much. Money is the taxpayer’s incentive to get up in the morning.

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    I like you, and you’re speaking truth to power. Eloquently put.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    you speak the truth, I apologize for having offended you in the same way ford supporters have (I also apologize to acozzaglia, I did not express my sentiment as reasonably or eloquently as linnygat has here). I am angry and disappointed, and I can’t understand how this happened, every time i try and think of a reason, try to see the humanity and not demonize them, I grasp at straws and come up with what i’ve come up with up until now. I can understand the feeling of being ignored and that past leaders have not acted in good conscience. I’m not rich, i struggle every day just like everyone else, I’m as much part of the group that voted for ford as anyone, but that’s why I have such a hard time with this. I see it, why don’t they? We’re in the same muck, yet my eyes aren’t clouded. We all want change, but I want the right changes and I knwo ford can’t deliver.

  • http://undefined linnyqat

    Tim, you have a good heart, and it takes a big person to apologize, even on something as innocuous as an anonymous forum. I feel the same way you do, believe me. And it is a struggle not to lash out at those who voted him in, and at Ford himself. (Especially at Ford himself!)
    I like to believe that the majority of people who voted for Ford were responding to what they perceive as irresponsible spending and a concern over the city deficit, as opposed to his homophobic, xenophobic, artsyphobic, envirophobic, angry, angry, angry red-faced bluster. That’s the only thing I can kinda sorta get behind, although I am one who believes in paying taxes, supporting unions, funding the arts, Keynesian economics, and all that crazy “socialist” stuff.
    It is easier to stomach fiscal conservatism as the primary motivator than it is to accept that the people of Toronto are becoming socially conservative. I really don’t believe that. Cheers, and feel better.
    PS hi, and thanks to a-cozz!

  • http://flickr.com/aged_accozzaglia accozzaglia

    Hindsight is why I’m waking up this morning without as shocked a hangover feeling as some others have expressed. I’m marginally older, and originally from the U.S., where I’ve experienced this horrified feeling several times — 1994, 2000, 2002, and 2004 being personally the most memorable. I’ve spent a lot of thought over that time trying to make sense of it, and these inform what I’ve been seeing throughout this municipal election.
    It will be a rough few years to come, but you survive it by taking on one day and one problem at a time. Sounds trite, but it’s essential to focus on what you can do and what you can improve rather than fall depressed at the overarching sea change we’re just now going through.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    Indeed. Also, you’ve never actually been under a jackboot. Comparisons between figures such as stalin, hitler’s nazis and David Miller, or Harper are ridiculously off base and offensive. Mismanaging money compared to being responsible for the brutal murder of millions and the destruction of generations of families and skills, art…? uhh what? that’s as messed up as those black bloc tactics users at the G20 carrying signs with Chairman Mao’s face on them, calling harper a fascist (btw, mao wasn’t a fascist). Those are strong words and I can understand how you’d feel they’re necessary, but harper is no Mao, nor is he Mussolini. Just as Miller is not Adolph or Stalin.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    you also haven’t taken any reigns of power from City Hall, ford still has only one vote amongst 44 and has yet to enact his platform or do anything about what he’s said he will. Only time will tell if any reigns shifting is to happen. I’m betting on Toronto winning this one, Ford losing.

  • http://undefined Christopher

    I live in Parkdale now, but lived in Scarborough for the first 19 years of my life, have moved back a few times since, and still consider myself Scarberian at heart.
    Let me explain something to you real quick.
    Just because Ford represented a suburban ward, don’t get it twisted like he’s some friend of the inner suburbs.
    Downtown will hurt a little under Ford, but it will still mostly be OK. It’s the inner suburbs that will take the big hit.
    Funding for priority neighbourhoods, all of which are in the burbs? That’s as good as gone.
    Kids in Dorset Park, Jamestown, Malvern, JnF, Galloway. They’re going to have to fend for themselves now. Guess what? If there’s any negative fallout from those kids not having resources to help steer them in a positive direction, it’s not going to jump off and King and Bay, or at Trinity Bellwoods, or in Rosedale. Right?
    Have you ever had to commute from Kennedy and Finch to downtown via TTC? It sucks. Guess what. In Ford’s Toronto, it’s only getting worse. Sorry inner suburbs. You’re not getting your piece of the transit pie.
    I could go on… but I feel like I’ve made my point. Even though Ford may have conned ENOUGH suburban voters into thinking he was “their guy,” that’s all it is. They’ve been conned.
    Folks north of Eglinton are going to realize soon enough that Ford sold them a false bill of goods, and it’s going to be ugly as hell when they do.
    Don’t lie to Scarberians. We don’t like it.
    PS. Moonmoth. Ignorance is as ugly on the left as it is on the right. Sit down son.
    PPS. Sorry this is beyond long. I had a lot to say.

  • http://undefined wchurchill100

    Mr Palmer, I can’t believe you are quoting me to support your left-wing views.
    Yes, I said a 5 minute conversation with the avg voter is the best argument against democracy. But I also said democracy is the worst from of government except for all other forms of government that have been tried from time to time.
    I find it astounding that liberal minded people only accept the democratic progress when it results in a “progressive” win. A landslide victory for a conservative candidate that was not even the strongest conservative candidate should tell you something about how the majority are feeling.
    I also find it objectionable that you seem to imply only those who agree with your liberal views are intelligent.
    Before Paul tries to correct me, while I never said the exact phrase that young convervative = no heart, and old liberal = no brains, I have said many other things along the same vein. And as I said in another post, in any society, it is common for people to have liberal views in their youth, but to become more conservative in their views as they gain experience and become wiser.
    Accept the democratic process.

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    That quote doesn’t say democracy shouldn’t exist, it says one of the weaknesses of democracy can be the people. By the opposite notion, they can be its strength as well, but not in this case, imo. As was pointed out, however, there’s something to be learned from this…
    Yer not even Winston Churchill are you?

  • http://undefined wchurchill100

    What you are saying is that the people are democracy’s strength only if they agree with your view. Otherwise they are democracy’s weakness.
    Well, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. As I said before, I find it objectionable that people like you can only accept the wisdom of the people when they happen to agree with your vision.
    And yes I am Winston Churchill. Can you tell from my picture?

  • http://undefined Mr. Palmer

    Nah, that’s not what i said at all. Tell yourself what you must.