Free Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story by Robyn Doolittle Page B

so persuasive,” Lindsay Luby said, looking back on the conversation.
    “Sorry,” she told him, “I’m not going to run in another ward. I like my ward. And I don’t need your help.”
    WITH THE 2000 ELECTION fast approaching, and Gloria Lindsay Luby refusing to budge, the Ford camp arranged a meeting with Mario Giansante. More changes were coming to the electoral landscape. Council was set to shrink again. Boundaries were rejigged to form forty-four wards—where it remains today— with one representative per ward, making for a much more competitive game. Now there would only be one seat up for grabs in Etobicoke Centre—in 1997 the ward was called Kingsway Humber—which councillors Lindsay Luby and Giansante currently shared.
    “If both of us ran, we knew we didn’t have a good chance against Gloria,” Giansante said. “If we ran as opponents we’d split the vote and Gloria would win automatically.”
    So Ford went north to take on incumbent Elizabeth Brown and Giansante stayed back for a rematch with Lindsay Luby.The Star called Ford’s bid “a bit of a long-shot.” Brown was well liked and was conservative, but her attendance had been spotty around City Hall. She explains that her marriage had been falling apart, then she’d suffered a car accident, and if that wasn’t enough, the July before the election she broke her arm.
    “Rob Ford actually coached my son’s football team at Martingrove. He was the stereotype of a belligerent, bullying coach,” Brown said, looking back on the election that changed her life. “To this day, people ask me, ‘How did Rob Ford beat you?’ They just don’t get it.”
    By the 2000 election, the Ford brand had taken root in Etobicoke. Brown’s ward overlapped with part of Doug Sr.’s old provincial riding, giving newbie Ford the name recognition of an incumbent. “People seemed to think that because it was a Ford running in their area, they should vote for him,” Brown said. The Ford machine was overwhelming. According to Brown, Ford’s campaign was one of the first to use telemarketing technology, something she couldn’t afford. The youngest Ford was energetic and full of promises. If Brown hit a neighbourhood after Ford, she’d end up using her face time with voters to deliver bad news. “Rob’s telling everybody he’s going to put a bus down this street, and I keep telling them Rob has no control over that.”
    And then there was his secret weapon. Ford vowed to have the “strongest sign campaign in the city.” A strong sign game “shows strength … popularity and it also shows that people want new leadership,” he told a reporter at the time.
    On November 4, the Toronto Star endorsed Rob Ford for council. “Ward 2 Etobicoke North: Incumbent Elizabeth Brown’s heart is in the right place but she is too often missing inaction. We suggest Rob Ford, a local businessman who is the son of former area MPP, Doug Ford.”
    Brown watched the results from the basement of a bar on Kipling Avenue: Rob Ford 5,750; Elizabeth Brown 4,122.
    The three-term councillor quit politics. Ford was sworn in on December 4, 2000.
    ROB FORD MIGHT BE A GENIUS —if not of the academic variety, certainly of the kind that matters in politics. He arrived at City Hall wanting to be mayor, and it wasn’t dumb luck that delivered his 2010 win. Ford has a natural gift for reading the public mood. In his decade as a councillor, he would pick all the right fights. He knew what he could get away with and what issues stoked his base. Many people assume Ford is a loose cannon, firing at random, but it isn’t easy to hit that many targets by accident. Ford seems to understand his intellectual shortcomings. Those close to him say he is aware that he comes across as boorish, a clumsy speaker, and incapable of sophisticated policy motions. So rather than play and lose, Ford changed the game. While the other forty-three councillors battled out their pecking order at City Hall, he spent his