Dear Mayor Tory,
I write to you as someone who’s known you for almost four decades. I’ve watched with interest as your political career has careened from success to failure to success to failure. You were only in your twenties when you were principal secretary for then-premier Bill Davis, back in the 1980s. You ran for mayor of Toronto in 2003 and lost to David Miller.
But you surprised many with your strong second-place performance — so much so that you rode that wave of support to winning the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership convention in 2004.
But you lost the 2007 provincial election to Dalton McGuinty, and you lost the ensuing byelection to get a seat back in the legislature. It looked as if your political career were dead.
But once again, you rose up: in 2014, you won the job as Toronto’s 65th mayor. And apparently, the people thought you did a solid enough job that they re-elected you twice, the first time with 60 per cent of the vote, the second time with 62 per cent. Those were awfully impressive votes of confidence in both your leadership and your ability to find common ground with Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in particular, to help Torontonians get through the pandemic.
Which brings us to current developments.
I’m not going to weigh in on the advisability of having an affair with an office subordinate. You already know it was wrong. The simple fact of a vast power imbalance makes it so. But plenty of people have emailed me wondering why you resigned. Some have pointed to what was considered, at the time, to be a consensual sexual relationship between former president Bill Clinton and a White House intern as “proof” that you can power through these things and emerge with high favourability ratings.
There are two problems with that point of view. Clinton’s behaviour seemed consistent with the guy the voters knew. It was wrong on every level but, sadly, not a surprise. In your case, the behaviour is shocking: it comes from the man who promised to bring honour and integrity back to the mayor’s office after the chaotic years of the Rob Ford administration.
But here’s the other thing: the Clinton scandal happened in 1996. That’s almost three decades ago. The yardsticks have moved since then. The public’s understanding of what constitutes a consensual relationship when the power imbalance is so vast has changed (although, for many, that doesn’t mean the behaviour has stopped). Some people said to me that, had your relationship happened with someone outside your office or unrelated to politics, it wouldn’t have been so problematic. After all, the voters are now quite accustomed to seeing public figures having affairs. It happens and doesn’t seem to be a firing offence anymore. The fact that it happened with someone so junior in your office is the problem, as you readily acknowledged in your resignation statement last night.
Having said all that, I’m also going to call out some of the over-the-top, pearl-clutching, hypocritical behaviour I’m seeing, as some people appear to be tsk-tsking with too much satisfaction. One New Democrat MP on social media accused you of “creeping” on a junior staffer, as if he had any idea how the relationship started.
More impressive to me were the comments of MPP Mitzie Hunter, who expressed her gratitude for your time in public service and for “owning up to [your] responsibilities.” She wished you and your family well as you try to repair the wounds.
Former Toronto city councillor Joe Mihevc urged people “to feel the pain of the moment, to wish and pray that Mayor Tory and all involved work this through in a good way.” These are the words of people with empathy, who feel no need to pile on.
In any event, regardless of how you came to your decision, it is a rare politician these days who falls on his sword because of a self-inflicted mistake, and you are receiving appropriate kudos for immediately taking what I know was a hard but necessary decision.
I suspect you fear that this scandal will be your ultimate political epitaph. While I can’t divine the future, I wonder whether, once the shock wears off, people will actually remember the 18- to 20-hour days you put in, particularly during COVID-19, and the dignified way in which you left office.
And that’s really all I’ve got to say. I’m sad for you that you won’t become the longest-serving mayor in Toronto history, which you would have been had you finished this term. While that wasn’t a driving factor behind your running for a third term, it certainly would have cemented your place in history. But obviously, it’s more important that you now take the time to repair the damage that’s been done.
I speak for many when I say that I wish you well in those efforts.
Sincerely,
Steve Paikin