Originally Published: 2010-07-18

Italian-Canadians Rocco Rossi and Joe Pantalone

The race for a seat on Toronto City Council is underway. With just over three months to go before the municipal elections – the GTA will vote for a new major and city council on Oct. 25 – the election campaign is finally coming alive.
Even if the candidate list isn’t yet complete – some knots still need to be worked out – the situation in the city’s 44 electoral districts is becoming clearer with the majority of city councillors deciding to offer their candidacy, with the entry into the political arena of some high-profile personalities and with the return of political personalities who have decided to re-enter the election adventure.
And while it appears that the game is already over in some districts, – either due to the political clout of councillors deciding to run again or because of the lack of alternatives who possess even a modicum of credibility – in many others it is wide open in those districts where the outgoing councillors are not running again or, as is Wards 2 and 19, the candidate has decided to launch his own challenge to succeed outgoing Mayor David Miller
The New Look of Toronto City Council
What will arise after Oct. 25 would well be a profoundly different municipal council. With less than 100 days to go before the vote, this is one of the possible scenarios being outlined by analysts. Certainly we won’t be seeing Joe Pantalone or Rob Ford on the City Council benches – they’ve decided to run for Miller’s top job.
There are four other outgoing councillors who have not offered their candidacy for re-election: Case Ootes (Ward 29), Kyle Rae (Ward 27), Michael Walker (Ward 22), and Adam Giambrone (Ward 18). After launching his candidacy for Toronto mayor with polls that showed him to be in second place behind front-runner George Smitherman, Giambrone was forced to throw in the towel after a sexually tinged scandal. The Italian-Canadian then maintained he was prepared to run for council in his own electoral ward, but subsequently decided to renounce definitively. A leap into provincial or federal politics is possible in his immediate future.

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