The Mayor's Race Is Now Officially On

You read it in Gord Henderson's column. The first shot is over the doublestack rail tunnel:

• "Ward 1 Coun. Dave Brister, who played a pivotal role in the community fight against DRTP, is appalled by the timing of Marra's motion and the naivete of anyone who could be so easily convinced DRTP has capitulated."

Attack Marra, support Brister is the clear short-term message. Is it ABB--Anybody But Bill-- and is Brister the short-term tool to be used now?

It's official... the horses have left the starting gate. After one year after the last election and three years before the next one, a number of Councillors are signalling that they are going to be running for Mayor.

Too early you think, hardly. An incumbent starts his campaign for re-election the day after the election when he/she is elected. Anyone who wants to run for an office should do the same.

The two early runners, who may not have the stamina to last out the entire race or who may suffer a broken leg due to a stumble between now and three years from now are clearly Councillors Brister and Marra. They may well be overtaken by one of their colleagues as the race continues or by a longshot who appears out of nowhere. In the meantime, let's try and handicap the race so far.

COUNCILLOR BRISTER

How can he run after what he said in the Gord Henderson column?

• "In fact, said Brister, he has zero interest in becoming mayor.
  
  “Write that rumour off forever. It’s not something I ever want to do and it’s just never going to happen."

That's not what a number of his colleagues believe! But you know how it is in politics. Just ask Dalton McGuinty... when the Draft Brister For Mayor Committee forms and when only he can save the City from financial ruin what choice will he have? It will be a groundswell of support. I mean really when you look at what he said, Gord probably misunderstood. Or maybe there was a misquote. Dave probably only meant he would not run while Eddie was still Mayor.

You can see the strategy that the Councillor is using by watching him at Council. Try to discredit his enemies in advance, play the budgeteer role to the hilt and pray that the Mayor will endorse him. However, if the Councillor makes silly slips, those may come back to haunt him as the race goes on as his opponents keep storing them up.

The Council meeting a few weeks ago was a classic night for Brister.

The Councillor has always likes to hear himself speak and that Monday night was a good example. He raised the strange occurrence involving something that was done by error it seems. The City Clerk had to tell the Councillor twice that she could not reveal information to him with respect to a communication sent by Chris Schnurr for legal reasons I believe. He does not know enough when to be quiet. He had to be told NO twice. Not good.

From what I understand, few of his colleagues knew what he was talking about. That leads to the question about how Councillor Brister knew about an e-mail that was sent by error in the first place. Who told him about it if the Clerk could not reveal it? You see what I mean about silly mistakes that can come back to haunt him. Schnurr is taking steps to discover what happened:

• "But, dear reader, there is more to the story than a mispresentation of the facts. However, that I will leave with the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario to investigate."

Didn't the Councillor look majestic when he was Acting Worship. He must have been in Seventh Heaven. I imagine he could picture himself sitting there in the future. He was in the Chair on an item about which his mentor spoke. We learned from what he said that he also worked with the Board of Habitat for Humanity and that his wife worked on one of their Builds. Now that is community involvement isn't it.

Some think my name for him, the Councillor formerly known as Councillor Budget, is too long. So I thought of a couple of new ones after watching him perform that night.

How about Councillor Grandstander. Out of the blue, at the end of the Council Meeting, he stood up to remind his Council colleagues that they need not accept a CPI Increase in their salary. He wanted to remind them that he had opted out of this privilege and obviously at the same time told us about his generosity in not going for this magnificent increase in a time of struggle for Taxpayers. Had he said that he would not accept the increase by receiving money from Boards, then that might have been something significant.

The other name that I thought might be appropriate was Councillor Teacher's Pet. Surely the Mayor did not intend that Dave "Spit anything out." Oh there was the Councillor jumping up, late mind you, seeking to defer the Maryvale matter so that Council would not get sued by the Ambassador Bridge Company. They'll probably exempt Maryvale when they renew the interim control bylaw and demolition bylaw. So much for Maryvale perhaps losing a huge grant.

Then, after Councillor Marra introduced his Notice of Motion about the rail tunnel, up jumped the Councillor again to complain that both he and Councillor Dilkens really should be introducing their full Notices at the time when they seek to do so. Eddie was clearly taken aback by Councillor Dilkens and was almost furious at Councillor Marra since he is the Lead on the Border don't you know. It looks like both Councillors chose not to let the Mayor know what they were going to do. But it's okay, Councillor Teacher's Pet is going to introduce a Motion requiring people to do so.

COUNCILLOR MARRA

He is clearly the Mayor-in-waiting and the odd's on favourite.. Frankly everyone expects him to be the new mayor. He has a well oiled machine that will help him on election day. But for a few very bad mistakes, he would have beaten Eddie Francis for Mayor in their first head-to-head competition, believe it or not.

The only thing that will beat Bill is Bill himself. Mistakes will be his downfall and he is prone to taking advice from people who use him for their own agendas. That is a characteristic, probably because he thinks so well of people that he doesn't recognize opportunists, that he must improve upon or he will be known as the Mayor who might have been.

He's been a good boy so far, even earning a few pats on the head from Gord. Bill being in the background and relatively quiet for the first year of this term was probably deliberate. He had to show his colleagues that he was a team player and not a Showboat. Well on Monday, he signalled that this one year time period is over.

He did an awful lot of talking on a number of different items at the Council Meeting, showing his breadth of experience as a former Councillor. His Motion was a direct challenge to the Mayor no matter how it is played out. It is a no-win for Eddie and a no-lose for Bill if the strategy has been well-considered.

However, the one bit of advice I would give to him right now is delete the word "Tunnel" from your vocabulary.

This I am afraid may well turn into a gigantic blunder on his part unless he plays it very, very carefully. When Bill ran for Mayor, he supported tunnelling at the time. Unfortunately for him, the word tunnel then meant DRTP. That cost him key votes especially in the STOPDRTP corridor ie where people turn out to vote.

He introduced the Tunnel Motion as a member of Council this time around and that effectively has been completely ignored as Greenlink seems to be the City's position even though it is in conflict with Bill's Motion. It shows he can be out-manoeuvred and may lack support from his colleagues. Obviously some want him to fail for their own political reasons so that is another concern.

Now he introduced a Motion dealing with the rail tunnel. As I have shown in previous BLOGs, it is so easy to take the position that the rail tunnel is a first step in DRTP going back to their truck Expressway. Bill may get tagged as being a DRTP front which is political suicide. Will he be able to extricate himself by showing that a rail tunnel is necessary for Windsor and showing how he can protect against a truck Expressway replacing it?

Watch which Councillors take a shot at him and whether the Mayor does too when the Motion is introduced and how Marra handles himself. It could result in a nasty fall for the front-runner if he is not careful or it may increase his lead dramatically and reduce the possible field.

Do you see what I mean... do you see how easy it is for even a front-runner to stumble over the next three years if he does not think through everything?

Get your bets in early while the odds are the best and pick out who you think will be the winner three years from now. Guess who I think is a 1,000-1 shot!