In politics, you know you’re a front-runner when you leave hot on the heels of one event to get to another, perhaps more important and certainly better-attended one.
That is what transpired at yesterday’s city councillor coffee house at University College, as Helen Kennedy and Adam Vaughan, front-runners in the race to replace Olivia Chow as city councillor for Toronto’s Ward 20, vanished immediately after their scheduled speeches.
Kennedy, an Irish-born activist who worked for the NDP’s Ontario caucus in the 80s and 90s, was constituency assistant to former city councillor Chow from 1999 on. Vaughan is a 20-year veteran of Toronto broadcast media, with stints at CityTV and the CBC to his name.
Before jetting, Kennedy touted her opposition to the “20,000-seat Varsity stadium,” killed in a U of T student referendum in 2002, and Vaughan stressed that affordable housing is a very important issue for students.
This left the rest of the candidates for Wards 20 and 27-who, together with the journalists present outnumbered attendees-to mix it up with U of T students.
“The’ve got somewhere better to be right now,” said Desmond Cole, a Ward 20 candidate who stuck around to talk policy.
Cole backed Bikeshare, a bicycle-lending program, saying it should be expanded throughout the city, with pick-up spots strategically located at major transit hubs.
“By giving priority to cyclists there’s more of a push to build that biking infrastructure that’s so badly needed,” he said.
-Mike Ghenu
