Pick 6: Toronto’s ward races to watch on election night

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When Toronto’s voters go to the polls Monday, they won’t just be picking a mayor – many will be choosing a new city councillor.

Plenty of attention has been paid to Brad Bradford’s run against incumbent Olivia Chow, but there are tight races all over the city. Some of them even outdo the mayor’s race in terms of political intrigue.

Here are six races the Toronto Sun will be watching Monday night, all of which at this point look too close to call:

Ward 4: Parkdale-High Park

This is the area’s first election in a couple decades without Gord Perks in the mix. Perks’ pick appears to be Diana Chan McNally, whose campaign contradictions were the subject of an extensive piece in the Sun. McNally has a pile of endorsements, including from former mayor David Miller.

In an unusual split between organized labour, while McNally has the support of CUPE and the ATU, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council is backing TDSB trustee Debbie King for council. While the Chow-aligned political group Progress Toronto has endorsed McNally, it also took credit for King’s 2022 victory in the trustee race. King also has the endorsement of NDP MPP turned social media gadfly Cheri DiNovo.

Sun readers in the ward looking for someone not linked to Perks or Chow might consider Nadia Guerrera – but it’s unlikely they’d be too excited by her list of Liberal endorsements, most notably that of former premier Kathleen Wynne. Guerrera has criticized City Hall’s weekend ban on cars in High Park, saying the community wasn’t properly consulted and the policy makes the green space less accessible.

Polling at the ward level is always tough, but Guerrera is clearly a contender. Mainstreet Research, in a poll released Thursday, had her a few points head of McNally with Adam Pham in third. Forum Research, meanwhile, had Guerrera in second behind King in its survey about a month ago, and Guerrera and McNally in a close fight for the lead in its numbers released Monday.

Housing is an issue in Parkdale-High Park as it is everywhere in Toronto, but Perks’ recent run as head of the city’s planning and housing committee complicates things somewhat. While McNally is vocally pro-housing, she’s also pro-Perks. When that committee recently considered a housing project at Swansea Mews, both Perks and McNally, who spoke at the meeting, were in favour of the project – despite concerns from residents about chemical contamination at the site.

Ward 5: York South-Weston

Even in a city of political dynasties, Frances Nunziata is hard to top. The longtime Speaker of Toronto’s City Council has been in local municipal politics since the ’80s. She’s no a shoo-in, though, as her 2022 win was by a mere 94 votes over social worker Chiara Padovani. It wasn’t too sweet a victory either, as the city’s integrity commissioner found constituent contact information had been misused in her campaign.

Padovani is back and not only has Progress Toronto endorsed her, they’re explicitly campaigning against Nunziata, putting her on a “city hall’s least wanted” list of just four people, on equal footing with Bradford. Nunziata may have other people working against her, too, as sources told a number of news outlets recently that she was dropping out of the race, only for the councillor to deny anything was happening.

Padovani is big on housing and road safety, and she also has the endorsement of Miller. She even shot a campaign video with McNally, whose ward is just to the south.

Those hoping for an anyone-but-Nunziata, anyone-but-Progress-Toronto candidate have a clear one in Daniel Di Giorgio, a school trustee who is part of his own political dynasty (his father Frank was a city councillor). Di Giorgio was in second behind Nunziata in a couple of Forum polls, the most recent of which cast this as a tight three-way race. Di Giorgio says crime, traffic and taxes would be among his main targets as councillor.

The ward’s historic Weston Lions Arena was in headlines across the region a few months back, as it appeared its days as a hockey rink were numbered. While Nunziata announced a plan to revamp the site while keeping hockey, it appears progress has stalled. Di Giorgio has criticized how the arena has been handled, as well as Nunziata’s apparent involvement with a developer tied to the project.

Ward 13: Toronto Centre

One of Toronto City Hall’s great rivalries of the last four years is coming to the ballot box as incumbent Chris Moise faces Daniel Tate, a vocal critic and founder of the political advocacy group Integrity TO. Even in the heart of downtown, Tate appears to have gained some traction as Forum had him a very close second to Moise in a recent poll – within the margin of error, in fact.

Regular Sun readers probably don’t need a primer on Moise vs. Tate, but here’s a short breakdown. Moise took on a very visible role in promoting the renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square. Tate put together a petition opposing the renaming and brought it to a city committee, and Tate alleges Moise called him a racist at that meeting. Moise later, when confronted by Tate after a public meeting, accused his constituent of holding a “white supremacy view.”

Moise paid for that – literally – after he rang up a legal bill amid an investigation by the integrity commissioner. Meanwhile, Tate raised money for a food bank by selling shirts with the old Yonge-Dundas Square logo on it, to the apparent chagrin of Moise’s staff.

Not to be forgotten in all that is Curran Stikuts, who has the backing of Moise’s predecessor and former ally Kristyn Wong-Tam. Downtowners put off by Moise’s confrontational style may find Stikuts a better political fit than Tate’s accountability-first brand of politics. (Tate is one of three people on Progress Toronto’s “least wanted list” who are seeking a council seat, along with Nunziata and Etobicoke North’s Vincent Crisanti.)

Stikuts told the Sun that voters “are losing trust in their city government,” and affordability and safety are key issues in his ward. Moise on his website agrees safety is a concern, and points to a need for a “sustained response” on mental health and addiction issues, saying the province shouldn’t have closed Toronto’s drug consumption sites. Tate holds the opposite view, arguing those policies have failed and a focus on treatment and recovery is needed.

Ward 14: Toronto-Danforth

When longtime councillor Paula Fletcher suddenly quit her already abrupt re-election bid, Toronto-Danforth turned into a clown car as more than a dozen candidates crammed in over just the final two days, registering for a run in the ward.

Most notable was Dianne Saxe, who abandoned her own re-election campaign in University-Rosedale ward. (Chow’s stepson Mike Layton is attempting a return to council and is widely seen as a lock.) While Saxe has an independent streak and a relatively high profile, she made her name at City Hall on environmental policies and hyper-local issues, and it’s no guarantee that what won over Rosedale will charm the Danforth. Still, as in her old ward, Saxe is emphasizing a need for cycling and transit infrastructure.

Saxe led a Forum poll handily in August, but that was in her old ward. Sara Ehrhardt, a school trustee, had the clear lead in Forum’s latest survey for Toronto-Danforth, plus a wide swath of left-leaning endorsements, including Progress Toronto. Mary Fragedakis, a former city councillor, ran provincially under the Liberal banner in 2022 but has lost out on many of the key lefty endorsements.

The candidate most familiar to Sun readers other than Saxe might be Caryma Sa’d, a lawyer known for documenting political protests on social media. On her website, Sa’d touts a Toronto where “nobody openly defecates on public transit” and the garbage cans no longer overflow.

Ward 19: Beaches-East York

Bradford has long signalled his intention to run for mayor again, which means his ward has been viewed as being in play for some time now. That’s drawn a lot of contenders, two with big name recognition. Nate Erskine-Smith, a former provincial Liberal leadership aspirant and briefly a federal cabinet minister, held a commanding lead over Natalie Johnson in Forum’s poll a month ago. Its latest survey found Johnson, a City Hall reporter for CTV, has since made up a lot of ground.

While Erskine-Smith has a couple of labour endorsements and told the Sun he’s close with Chow, Johnson has the backing of CUPE 416. Meanwhile, 2022’s runner-up, Jennie Worden, won an endorsement from ACORN. While this appears to be a two-horse race, 13 people are registered – and the race was seen as being open enough that a church in the ward held a meet-and-greet rather than the typical candidates debate.

This race has significance for Torontonians outside of the ward as the eastern Gardiner ramp, gone but not forgotten, has emerged as a major campaign issue. Johnson has pledged to make replacing that ramp “a political priority.” Erskine-Smith, in a recent social media video, said the city can’t “backtrack” on its plans to redevelop the ramp’s old home on Logan Ave., indicating support for a new ramp at Cherry St.

Erskine-Smith has built his political reputation on housing issues, and in an interview with the Sun he said City Hall has to get better at providing services. Johnson’s focus is on getting the ward moving. Her website has a list of policies, and the Gardiner ramp is No. 1 while second and third are traffic and transit.

Ward 23: Scarborough North

Few expected Scarborough North would emerge as a hotbed of political drama, but indeed it has. Jamaal Myers, the TTC board chairman and one of Chow’s most high-profile allies, is fighting off a challenge from former Liberal MP Shaun Chen. Mainstreet’s President Quito Maggi recently told the Sun that between those two and Han Dong, the ward might have the tightest three-way race in the city.

That Chen ran at all was something of a shocker, as he abruptly quit Parliament in August, citing “significant health issues” related to a car crash. That left very little time for him to register for a municipal run, and he got his papers in on the last day. Forum’s most recent poll suggests Chen is just a few points ahead of Myers. In third was Dong, another former Liberal MP, whose alleged links to election interference were covered extensively in the Sun in 2023.

No Toronto councillor was voted in on fewer ballots in 2022 than Myers, who got just 5,315. The incumbent, Cynthia Lai, died mere days before the election and ballots bearing her name went uncounted. It could be that suburban Scarborough North just doesn’t want the progressive agenda of Myers, whose 2022 run was backed by Progress Toronto.

Consider the TTC’s recent indigenous icon wayfinding proposal, which was poorly received at a board meeting. Myers shepherded that idea, which had been brought forward by a young man who worked in his office, having been placed there as part of a city fellowship program. Paul Ainslie, who represents a neighbouring Scarborough ward and is typically an ally of Myers, told the meeting some of his constituents were “insulted” by the idea of using pictographs of turtles and birds as an act of reconciliation. Myers told his vice-chairman mid-meeting that the proposal “wasn’t supposed to go anywhere.”

On his website, Chen puts investment for Scarborough – including an eastward extension of the Sheppard subway – atop his list of local issues. Myers, meanwhile, touts the TTC’s fare freeze and the ward’s six-plex housing pilot.

jholmes@postmedia.com

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