One of the highest-profile candidates in the race to be Toronto’s mayor, former police chief Mark Saunders, has finished in a distant third place behind Olivia Chow.
Speaking at his election night event, Saunders offered his congratulations to Chow, saying she “fought a tough fight and, at the end of the day, came out victorious.”
“We have to do everything we can to make this city an amazing city, (the) incredible city that it is, but we have so much (more) to do,” he said in a concession speech Monday.
“So, we have to support Olivia Chow in that position of mayor because there is a lot of work we all have to do.”
Chow led with over 37 per cent of the vote according to unofficial results around 11 p.m. on election night, with a handful of polls left to declare. Ana Bailao was in second with just over 32 per cent and support for Saunders was recorded at around eight per cent.
Saunders was widely regarded as the leading right-of-centre candidate in the race, supposed to appeal particularly to voters in Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York. His credentials as a former cop and car-friendly policies were expected to burnish that reputation.
Saunders tried to position himself as the only candidate who could stop former NDP MP Chow from winning the race. Leaflets handed out on election day and a blitz of announcements framed Saunders as the only option for voters who didn’t want to see Chow lead city hall.
“Saunders is how you stop Chow,” an image in the header of his Twitter account read on Monday evening.
Polling work completed in mid-June, however, suggested he was failing to galvanize more suburban Toronto vote. An Ipsos poll found he would enjoy 19 per cent of the popular vote in North York, 18 per cent in Etobicoke and 16 per cent in Scarborough when the fieldwork was completed.
“Usually what happens in these election campaigns is you end up with two very serious candidates: one who represents downtown and tends to be more progressive and somebody who represents more of a conservative point of view,” Global CEO Ipsos Public Affairs Darrell Bricker previously told Global News.
“In this instance, what’s happened is the downtown constituency has really coalesced around Olivia Chow … but then there’s nobody else that even competes with her in the suburbs. As a result of that, she’s strong enough but not as strong as we’ve seen with (other candidates) in previous mayoralty campaigns.”
As the campaign wound down, Ontario Premier and Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford confirmed his long-hinted endorsement of Saunders. However, Ford’s backing was not enough to push the campaign over the line — or even close to it.
Ford said he thought Saunders was the best candidate to lead Toronto on issues like responsible spending of taxpayer money, calling the prospect of Chow as mayor an “unmitigated disaster.”
On election night, Ford congratulated Chow on her victory. “While we’re not always going to agree on everything, what we can agree on is our shared commitment to making Toronto a place where businesses, families and workers can thrive,” he said in a statement posted to Twitter.
A strong outsider campaign from former Postmedia columnist Anthony Furey also cast some doubt on Saunders’ role.
On the eve of the election, Saunders and Furey sparred online over who would be the best candidate to stop Chow. The pair said voters were switching signs between the two camps.
“In chatting, we agreed that you’ve got a lot of great ideas,” Saunders said in reply to a tweet from Furey that said one home had scrapped their Saunders sign for a Furey version.
“But they thought my experience leading an organization with a billion-dollar budget and over 7,000 people, and 38 years of public service, would make me a more effective mayor.”
Unofficial results on election night had Furey in fourth place, with around 35,000 votes compared to Saunders’ total of around 62,000 just after 11 p.m. on Monday.
Chow, the winner, pulled in more than 268,000.