Toronto’s next mayor

Who will you vote for when there may be over 40 candidates?
Major players, fringe candidates, unknown names, up-and comers
By Kris Scheuer
(Updated Feb. 5. Frequent updates here.)

Mayor David Miller not seeking re-election in 2010. Who should be the next to run the city?

Who will be the city’s next mayor? As of Feb. 5, two dozen candidates have signed up.
I have started the ball rolling with some who have expressed interest.
Let me know if there are others who you see running or think should run for the city’s top political job.
As well in my eight years writing about politics, I’d say there are two categories of candidates, well maybe four. I will let you decide where you think the mayoralty candidates belong in these categories…
But first  the contenders.
The serious and well known so called “front runners”. These are higher profile candidates.
So far MPP George Smitherman, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, and Liberal strategist and fundraiser Rocco Rossi, Councillor Joe Pantalone, Councillor Adam Giambrone have announced they will all run for mayor.
Others who were considering and would have been frontrunner but decided against it are Conservative leader John Tory, current city councillors Adam Vaughan and Shelley Carroll.

Here are a couple of the lesser known people planning to run for mayor…
JP Pampena is running. So what does he stand for? Well check out his site for the full scoop. But here are two of his ideas: set up a Public Expense Registry so we can keep track of how city hall spends our money and try to reduce Toronto’s land transfer tax for first time buyers. It’s my recollection first time buyers are exempt already from this tax.
John Letonja wrote me at the end of September to say he’s running for mayor and he is registered.

Now my perspective on the different categories of candidates. This is an observation having interviewed dozens and dozens of candidates in elections at all levels of government in the past seven years.

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