TORONTO — Rob Ford’s former chief of staff Mark Towhey is telling all in a new book and he sat down with Global News to discuss his time working with the embattled former mayor.
Ford family turmoil
It was around 3 a.m. in June of 2012 when Towhey said he found himself on the phone with Ford as he argued with his wife, Renata, in their family home.
“I answer the phone and very quickly I can tell he’s in an altered state. He’s intoxicated by something. He’s talking very quickly. It’s very difficult to understand what he’s saying,” Towhey told Global News.
“And then it proceeded to this very lengthy argument moving through the house between him and his wife Renata Ford. And that was pretty difficult to listen to.”
Towhey said Ford told him he called him so that he could act as a witness over the phone to the fact Ford was then leaving the residence, but the call quickly escalated.
“I was poised there actually with my personal phone on 911 ready to dial if it got to the point where I thought there was going to be violence — but it never really did,” said Towhey.
“He does at one time say he’s looking for his gun. At which point bells go off and I ask, ‘Rob, do you have a gun? Where are the kids?’ And very quickly, within about 60 seconds of that it’s pretty clear he doesn’t actually have a gun with him. He said, ‘Oh she took it,’ whatever it is it’s not there, it’s not imminent.”
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Towhey said that due to Ford’s conduct at the time, it appeared to him that he was under the influence of more than just alcohol.
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“His behaviour, in my mind, didn’t seem to be the type of behaviour that I would associate with someone who’s just on alcohol,” said Towhey.
“He was speeded up, he was fast, he was agitated and incoherent.”
At one point in the call, Towhey said Ford told him he was going to get his daughter Stephanie to “pick sides” in the argument.
“And I’m kind of going, ‘Oh God.’ And I said Rob, don’t go get Stephanie. Let the kid sleep,” he said.
Towhey said he eventually did hear Ford’s daughter on the phone, which he said was “the most heartbreaking part” of the call.
“And as he wakes her up, he’s asking her to pick sides,” Towhey said.
“He’s saying, basically for my benefit on the phone, ‘Mommy’s been bad. Has mommy been bad Steffy?’ Stephanie’s response is just priceless and innocent and she says, ‘Nobody’s bad,’ she says, ‘Everybody’s good in this house dad.'”
Garrison Ball controversy
In a more widely publicized controversy with the then-mayor, Towhey said there was some misinformation surrounding the Garrison Ball fundraiser in Feb. 2013 that Ford was reportedly asked to leave from for being intoxicated.
“The mayor was in my impression absolutely intoxicated by something, he was never asked to leave — except by me,” Towhey said.
“People came up and asked me if he was OK, and I spoke with them … but at no point did anyone ever ask him to leave. Or ask me to ask him to leave or get him to leave.”
Towhey also said he was concerned for his own safety during the incident.
“There was a part when he first came in that I thought it was going to come to blows and I tried to deescalate that as quickly as I could,” he said.
“But I did physically put myself in his path to keep him from walking into a ballroom, in a very disheveled and chaotic state and was able to keep him out long enough to at least calm him down.”
Timing of book excerpts with federal election
Towhey said publishing excerpts from his forthcoming book Mayor Rob Ford: Uncontrollable: How I Tried to Help the World’s Most Notorious Mayor in Maclean’s magazine just five days before the federal election and a day after Rob and Doug Ford attended a rally for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper was not a political tactic.
Towhey said the the timing of the publication was “unfortunate” because it called back Rob Ford’s troubled past into voter’s minds, but it was not an attempt to sabotage the Conservative party.
“Not at all, in fact the excerpt timing had nothing to do with me,” he said. “It changed only because we changed the date of publication to match, frankly, a competing book.”
But Towhey said it’s unclear whether Ford’s endorsement of Harper would help or hurt his campaign.
“Rob Ford to this day still has a very large cohort of supporters not only in Toronto but across the country. For what he stood for. Not even for necessarily the man,” Towhey said.
“But I think from the Prime Minister’s perspective it’s a double edged sword and I don’t know which way it will cut.”
Despite everything, Towhey said he’s not even sure if he would vote for Rob Ford again if he were to run for mayor in 2018.
“I don’t know, it depends who else the other choices are. But a sober Rob Ford, a clean Rob Ford who had been clearly sober and clean from now until then, in 2018, and had a track record that would give you confidence that he was going to stay and had the supports to keep him sober — I think a lot of people would respond to what he wants to do with the city,” he said.
“Me? I like a lot of his ideas. I don’t like all of them.”
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