Olivia Chow speaks at a G20 briefing in April in Toronto.
The Pantalone campaign has certainly extracted maximum mileage from the support of the Layton-Chow clan. First, Mike Layton, son of the federal NDP leader, endorsed the veteran councillor for mayor. (Mr. Pantalone endorsed Mike right back; he's running for Mr. Pantalone's old council seat.) Then Jack Layton endorsed him.
On Thursday, Olivia Chow did the same at a Chinatown restaurant to which a handful of gullible and hungry reporters were lured with promises of dumplings. Full disclosure: I snuck one and it was yummy. Let no one accuse the Pantalone campaign of breaking snack-related pledges.
Ms. Chow began her statement by comparing Mr. Pantalone to front-runner Rob Ford.
"Mr. Ford is loud, he hasn't seen a camera he doesn't like," she said. "Whereas Mr. Pantalone, he works hard, sometimes behind the scenes. He just gets things done in his quiet, effective very serious way. And that's in stark contrast to what Mr. Ford is offering."
True as that may be, it's part of Mr. Pantalone's problem in this race. He's struggling to transform himself from a low-key workhorse to a high-wattage political star, and, if the polls so far are any indication, it's not working.
If ever there was a moment for Mr. Pantalone to change all that, it's now. Until this week, he was alone on the left. Now he's alone in the centre, too, courtesy of George Smitherman and Rocco Rossi lurching into Rob Ford territory this week. Mr. Rossi tried to claim that territory early in the campaign, but Mr. Ford muscled him out, prompting the former Liberal fundraiser to lift Mr. Ford's promise of slashing council (almost) in half Wednesday.
But Mr. Pantalone isn't immune to tax-cutting mania either. It's been little remarked upon that he's promising to phase out the vehicle-registration tax, something he advocated as deputy mayor. The $60 fee was just as unpopular then as it is today, but Mr. Pantalone and council's left-leaning majority had the courage to champion it because, as they argued at the time, a city the size of Toronto needs to diversify its tax base.
Mr. Pantalone defended the flip-flop Thursday by saying that "wise" politicians should fix their "mistakes."
"Every human being makes mistakes," he said."What I learned from talking to Torontonians over the last three years is that that tax doesn't have the moral authority with them."