A selection of middle-ish councillors and how their voting patterns changed over the last six months of 2011.
As a follow-up to this week’s City Council Scorecard Update, here’s a look at how various on-the-fence councillors saw their overall “Ford Nation” score shift between June and December. Remember that the June meeting was the last one before things really got heated — after it came Pride, Jarvis, the Core Service Review, the marathon Executive Committee meeting and a handful of 911 calls.
Of the eleven councillors listed above — all of whom float in the council “middle” to varying degrees — only two grew closer to the mayor’s agenda through the latter half of the year. Of the two, Councillor Moeser is more inscrutable — and quiet — so his motivations are harder to pin down. (But he clearly decided to embrace this administration in a big bear hug.) Councillor Berardinetti, on the other hand, seemingly made a conscious choice to double down on her support for Team Ford, and has been very public in her role as a flagbearer for the administration.
The remaining nine councillors on the list all backed off from Rob Ford as the budget process began. Some, like Gloria Lindsay Luby, Mary-Margaret McMahon and Ana Bailão, saw their score drop precipitously as council started voting on cuts to service.
James Pasternak’s eight point drop is probably the biggest surprise. As a new councillor, he positioned himself as a guy with a decidedly right-of-centre approach. And unlike some of the other councillors on the list, he hasn’t had any high profile public disagreements with Ford policy. But in recent months he’s shown himself to be open to independent thinking and, more importantly, independent voting. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues.
How does council as a whole look?
For the sake of completion, I’ve also compiled the same table as above showing data for all 45 members of council. There’s not a whole lot to glean from this — does it really matter that, for example, Giorgio Mammoliti’s Ford Nation score dropped from 100% to 97%? — but, really, it’s not like it’s possible to have too many charts or anything.
Does any of this matter?
For a few reasons, I think it does. First, the eleven councillors listed at the top of this post make up, under the broadest definition, council’s middle. They’re the guys you need to call if you’re trying to swing an issue in a certain direction. That so many of them are trending solidly away from the mayor’s agenda is important.
Second, one of the big knocks against the whole idea of Rob Ford as Mayor of Toronto was that he’d never be able to command enough support at council to pass anything. Howard Moscoe famously said that Ford wouldn’t be able to pass gas at council, much less get his agenda through.
That Ford and his team have managed to broker the support they have is a hugely significant political achievement for this administration. But it’s fragile. Teetering on the edge. All it’ll take is one good push.
Lastly, we’re heading into a council budget debate in a week’s time that has real potential to be a total catastrophe for Rob Ford. He was already handed several defeats in September when council voted on various Core Service Review considerations. He lost seven whipped votes during that meeting. He could lose a hell of a lot more next week.
It’s a good bet that a lot of people are doing a lot of scrambling right now to ensure the council votes are in place to get the 2012 budget through without serious alteration. For those of us watching, January 17 is shaping up to be one hell of a show.
