TORONTO – Is Doug Ford able to use the trough of campaign funds raised by his brother’s now defunct campaign? No.
And he can’t use his brother’s resources unless he buys them.
“There’s no preclusion from Doug Ford from using those signs but he has to pay fair market value to get those signs,” Toronto lawyer John Mascarin said Monday. “Same with office resources, office equipment, anything that Mayor Ford may have leased or paid for has to be sold to Doug Ford, or sublet to him, at fair market value.”
The Ford’s also aren’t able to transfer funds from one campaign to another. When a candidate signs up to run for municipal office in Ontario, they have to open a bank account under their name for the sole purpose of housing campaign funds – if they drop out of the race, they have to return the money. If there’s a surplus after returning funds or paying off debt, the rest is seized by the city.
But fundraising during a mayoral election is self-policed: there’s no election officials double-checking and signing off on where campaign finances are spent until after the election.
Rob Ford did run afoul of the financing rules in 2010 exceeding the legal spending limit and other “apparent contraventions” of election law, according to an auditor’s report.
Mayoral campaigns are allowed to spend approximately $1.3 million before election day.
John Tory and Olivia Chow have been getting closer to that limit by spending money on ads, resources and office space since they entered the race.
And Doug Ford may an advantage in the month remaining before election day: he has the same amount to spend in just six weeks – and can do it all from his own pocket.
“If he self-finances he could self-finance up to about $1.3 million and can use that total amount in the last five to six weeks of the campaign,” Mascarin said. “Which is a huge advantage for attack ads.”
But what about the mayor’s political capital – could his brother benefit from the populist admiration for Rob Ford? One poll released since Doug announced he would run suggests he is a legitimate candidate but Peter Graefe, a professor at McMaster University, suggests there are some stark differences between the two brothers.
Graefe said even in the way Rob Ford dresses is a way of “making himself not seem like the millionaire that he is.”
“But in fact as a common person who has similar problems of getting to work and having to work a job he maybe doesn’t like in an ill-fitting suit, whereas Doug Ford really looked more like a boss,” he said.
Graefe suggested there may be two camps of Ford believers: the “true blue” believers who want a smaller government may move to his brother while some of the populous voters may not see Rob Ford’s “average guy” personality in his older brother.
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