John Tory proves bland works at the ballot box. Can he make it work for the city?

It’s John Tory’s city, we just live in it.

After Monday night’s election result, Tory will go on to be the longest-serving mayor in Toronto history, with a mandate that extends from one end of the city to the other. He cruised to victory over his opponents with more than 60 per cent of the vote. Again.

This guy spent decades running for things and losing. Now he’s among the winningest politicians in our political history, directly elected three times in a row, chosen directly by more electors than any other politician in Canada.

He now comes into his third term with a renewed big mandate from the voters, armed with new “strong mayor” powers from the province, supported by a council that appears to be the equivalent of a majority parliament — based on those candidates he endorsed, those who jockeyed for his favour during the campaign, and those who’ve supported his every wish in the past.

On paper, at least, he looks unstoppable.

But is he startable?

I mean, what is it he wants to do with that unprecedentedly advantageous position? What is his legacy going to be?

Well, to hear him tell it, prudent fiscal management, keeping on with the plan to build affordable housing, keeping on with the plan to watch the province build transit. A touch of this, a touch of that, not too much of anything. Stop me if the staggeringly expansive vision gets to be too much for you.

Maybe that sarcasm is not fair. The expansive vision thing is not Tory’s thing. Avoiding things getting to be “too much” is. That, you have to conclude after so many elections, is the kind of city we are.

As Tory’s opponent Gil Penalosa, who finished second after beginning the campaign with a long resumé but short on name recognition, noted in the weeks before the election, for such a towering figure in municipal political history, people have surprisingly lukewarm feelings toward him.

He isn’t widely beloved. He isn’t widely hated. He is not celebrated, or feared. He is just the mayor.

He’s worked hard to become that guy, the personification of an amiable shrug. It’s been widely noted he learned it at the knee of long-serving Ontario premier Bill Davis, whose famous slogan was “bland works.” That could certainly serve as the motto of Tory’s office.

But does bland still work? Clearly at the ballot box it does. But in the streets, and parks, and living rooms of this city, does it work?

It’s a core question in this place that used to be nicknamed “The City That Works.” Famous, back then, for clean streets and diverse mixed-income neighbourhoods, and a transit system that excelled in providing widespread service and was admired for its capacity to build.

Is any of that still true of Toronto? It seems to grow less so with every passing year, as the state-of-good-repair backlog grows and rents skyrocket and poor people are forced further and further out of the city core and perpetual construction sites become the predominant characteristic of every place across this place. Tory isn’t blind to this stuff, and he doesn’t ignore it. It’s just that his preferred pace of responding is best measured in centimetres, and the tides pushing the city are tossing us kilometres in their own directions.

What’s the alternative?

It sure looks like Tory’s unrivalled dominance of recent city politics has come about at least in part due to the cowardice and calculation of his most vocal opponents: the council and urban progressives who stand up to make speeches calling his approach heartless and soulless have, for two elections in a row, refused to really get in the arena and challenge him.

Of course, when the big, familiar names demurred, people have stepped up: Jennifer Keesmaat last time, Penalosa this time. They began late — outright saying they were running to ensure at least someone challenged this guy. They put up a fight. But the people considered obvious heavyweights stood on the sidelines, often without even offering a public endorsement.

No one wants to get on Tory’s bad side. You might be able to work with him. As long as you don’t rock the boat.

It is strange, after the turbulence of Mel Lastman, and David Miller, and Rob Ford — the pitching and yawing from one ideological extreme to another — to see the city settle into a culture of not rocking the boat. It’s a political culture more befitting the city’s historic reputation as a buttoned-up churchyard run by prim Protestant insurance executives, for sure. But we aren’t that WASP-y little city anymore, are we?

There were splashes of inspiration in this campaign. Chloe Brown, an unapologetic and refreshingly plainspoken advocate of the middle class, was a revelation — and a person one hopes we might see figure into the city’s political future despite her warnings that she and a whole chunk of her generation might just give up on us and leave town. Penalosa’s public-space urbanism quickly and neatly showed how simple a real vision for transformation of the city’s spaces could be, and how easy it would be to imagine it implemented.

The voters didn’t choose those options. But perhaps the door is open for Tory to choose to implement some of them.

As mayor, Tory has often lived up — at least in part — to his reputation as someone who will work across the aisle. Many of his best moves as mayor were not promises he made on the campaign trail; many were policies advocated by his nominal political opposition. Perhaps the platforms of Brown and Penalosa and Stephen Punwasi and others in this campaign can also be plundered to build Tory’s legacy.

When he was asked at a Star editorial board what he planned to do with a third and final term with a level of authority other previous mayors would have salivated at, Tory said he planned to build something. “If I have any political capital in the bank, I don’t see it as being any credit to me to leave with a balance in that account.”

He said the city was on the “cusp” of regaining its pre-pandemic place as a city of opportunity and growth, and that solving the housing affordability crisis would be his number one way to ensure it stayed that way. The only obvious political obstacle he faces is the meddling of the premier, and Tory has repeatedly told us he is the best, most experienced person to navigate that meddling to the city’s advantage.

Even after two terms, his legacy is undefined. This appears to be his last chance to cement it. Despite a long biographical preamble as a famous loser of elections, Tory has reached a point where history will remember him as an unprecedented municipal electoral success. Now he gets to decide if it also remembers his time in office as being equally successful for the city who elected him.

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