Doug Ford allegedly threatens fellow councillor with automated wrath

Now and then we hear griping about Doug Ford’s outsized influence at city hall given the brief time he’s actually spent as a councillor (294 days, by our count). And just this week we saw some juicy evidence of the kind of tactics Ford employs when he’s trying to sway votes, courtesy of the Toronto Star’s Royson James. Apparently, Ford attempted to coerce councillor Chin Lee into supporting the Fords in their waterfront scheming (UPDATE: Lee’s claim that he was strong-armed by Ford applies to the effort to dismantle the public housing board, not the waterfront revitalization plan as James originally stated, according to a clarification by the Star). Like his brother, Doug Ford’s preferred method for throwing his weight around seems to be robo calls, those automated messages you receive during election campaigns. Ford allegedly told Lee that he’d use robo calls to build dissent against the Scarborough-Rouge River councillor if he didn’t fall in line. Lee, to his credit, doesn’t seem to have bowed to the bullying. Now that James has blown Ford’s cover, perhaps his readers can expect a robo call or two denouncing the paper’s predictable socialist tactics. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »