PLEASE PLEASE JOHN TORY SAVE US

The Costly Miller Lites Are Bankrupting Us

David Miller is the most expensive mayor in Toronto's history. We should get down on our knees and pray that John Tory will deliver us from Miller and his socialist cabal, the Miller Lites, in the next municipal election.
It almost happened the last time. Tory won almost all the suburban ridings, 21 in fact, and only Miller's clutch on the central city, where compassionate conservatism worries downtowners because it might deprive them of their latest ripoff, carried him to victory.
Tory's voters, all 263,000 of them, plainly didn't trust Miller and his downtown issues, like crippling the island airport, still one of the stupidest campaigns ever lost by a mayor, haven't made them feel any better.
All you have to do is pay your increased taxes -- which include such ripoffs as a new annual $60 tax on each car -- and look at the decline in services and infrastructure and you contemplate a class action suit against Miller and his colleagues. If only that was legal.
I've known Tory since he was kid radio reporter around City Hall and then ran David Crombie's second mayoralty campaign. (I would say that the fact Crombie didn't work for his old friend and supporter against Miller was disgraceful, but I hold off because Crombie is a friend. .)
I didn't much like Tory as he ran Bill Davis' office as premier. I said so. Rich kid. Spawn of the Establishment. Prominent father. Socialite mother. Then one day on the Dateline Ontario TV show --a half-hour political panel show run by the CBC in Ontario-- I watched him perform under the hot lights and decided he was probably the best politician we had had on the show in years. And I had been on the show dozens of times.
Then he had a stellar career at Rogers. I know from when Rogers owned the Toronto Sun when I was Editor, and from senior businessmen who had to work with him, that he had the respect, if almost the affection, of everyone reporting to him or working with him. And that's rare.
His career as leader of the Ontario Conservatives was not great, and the depths were reached on that dumb idea about provincial money for religious schools. But no one's perfect. And when he's up against Miller, a lawyer who was defeated federally, provincially and municipally before he got on council as a mediocre member, such slips are acceptable.
With no due respect to the present councillors who are mentioned as possible mayoral candidates, a couple of whom are friends, they are almost pygmies when it comes to Tory's business and political record and the Bay St. support which would give him enough money to offset all the unions, New Democrats, gliberals and activists who will go crazy at the prospect of losing their patsy mayor.
Tory was just on BNN, the business TV channel, and you could tell from the way he spoke and by how he was treated by others on the program that they respect him while probably regretting how his career in provincial politics, where he had started as a boy wonder, ended in such disaster.
If John Tory is smart, he'll ignore us and make more millions in business while dining at the Albany Club and enjoying his family. If we are smart, we will besiege him until he says yes. After all, we can't afford the most expensive mayor that Toronto has had since it started in 1834.

P.S. Unfortunately Tory listened to that last paragraph and announced on Jan. 7, 2010 that he wouldn't run for mayor. More time with his family was a major consideration. Any nice father would understand!