Mammoliti will not be endorsing Sarah Thomson; Thomson seems OK with it

Mammoliti will not be endorsing Sarah Thomson; Thomson seems OK with it

One of the great prerogatives of running for office and then quitting the race is that you get to shop your influence around and see who’s willing to grovel for your endorsement. John Edwards did it and famously demanded a Jet Ski from either Obama or Clinton during their race, and now Giorgio Mammoliti is musing publicly about whom he’ll endorse for mayor of Toronto. According to Inside Toronto, that person will not be Sarah Thomson.

“I’ll tell you this. I will not be supporting Sarah Thomson. She has no experience, she brings nothing to the table and she hasn’t got an absolute clue on how the city’s run,” he said. “We can’t afford to be training somebody for the next eight years at city hall. We’ve all been down here and we know it’s going to take that long for someone to feel comfortable in moving around city hall.”

Thomson responded by email to the comments.

“Mr. Mammoliti has no understanding of the vast amount of experience I will bring to city hall,” she wrote, referring to her success as an entrepreneur and the consensus building and leadership skills that she’s gained in that way.

Thomson added that a lot of voters seem to think experience is part of the problem at city hall these days, not the solution. What she did not add, but we will, is that Mammoliti’s endorsement wouldn’t exactly carry a lot of weight even when he was running: in one of the last polls before he dropped out, Mammoliti had a whopping 3 per cent of the vote in a poll where the margin of error was 4.8 per cent. We’ll leave the math to you.

Yesterday we asked if anyone was surprised by NDP leader Jack Layton endorsing Joe Pantalone. When Mammoliti eventually does endorse someone, the question will be if anyone could possibly care.

Mammoliti rules out Thomson for his support in mayoral race [Inside Toronto]