Rob Ford

This wealthy Etobicoke bully accurately translated the discontent in Toronto’s suburbs with David Miller’s downtown-focused administration into a successful run at the mayoralty race for the city in 2010, bringing his supposedly-smarter older brother Doug with him to city council as his designated shit-kicker. The brothers ran a Mike-Harris-comes-to-Toronto campaign that convinced voters that the city had a huge budget deficit, and that only they could get rid of the gravy-train at city hall. There was no gravy, brother Doug has turned out to be even dumber than Rob, the budget deficit wasn’t huge, and even Ford’s own allies have recognized that his ideology-based wish to cut city services is nothing more than that—and political suicide for them. So Toronto gets four years of being embarrassed by two fat bullies, and government-by-conflict.

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