Yet another mayoral debate: Mammoliti is sensible, Pantalone is lonely and Tory’s Hamlet act gets old

Yet another mayoral debate: Mammoliti is sensible, Pantalone is lonely and Tory’s Hamlet act gets old

The latest debate featured Rob Ford and George Smitherman sniping at each other—what else is new? We’re turning our gaze to some of the less bombastic candidates—like Joe Pantalone, the sole member among the current crop who is not running as fast as he can from David Miller. In this case, Pantalone found himself alone in defending a requirement that developers provide new condo owners with a year’s supply of Metropasses. All of his rivals for the Clamshell Crown were against it, though Giorgio Mammoliti had a surprisingly nuanced take on the issue (and that’s the first time that sentence has ever been written), saying developers might prefer to pay “little things” if they could get city hall approvals in six months instead of six years.

One last thing that made last night’s debate (the second of the week) interesting was that it was moderated by John Tory. He maintained his policy of strategic ambiguity on his mayoral ambitions, saying only that Web petitions and newspaper articles don’t sway him, but “personal entreaties” do. So what would a person have to say to Tory for him to come off the fence? And if Tory is a sorta-maybe candidate, when does he become disqualified from moderating a candidates’ debate?

• Ford, Smitherman clash over development [Toronto Star]