The Amazing Race

Rob Ford’s bid for mayor takes the competition to new levels of crazy

It’s great to live in a city where anyone with $200 to cover the entrance fee can run for mayor. But, really, Rob Ford? We’re one bearded lady away from the big top here. Of the 27 candidates registered, the main ring features Joe Pantalone, Miller’s loyal deputy, who famously waged a war on Ossington fun; Giorgio Mammoliti, who wants to impose a curfew on tweens; Rocco Rossi, who will turn Toronto into Vegas North to balance the municipal budget; and Sarah Thomson, whose fuzzy math on transit funding has earned her comparisons to Sarah Palin.

And there’s Ford. Even voters who admire his pathological frugality have to admit that a man who has spent the better part of his political career dislodging his foot from his mouth is a long shot for mayor. In Ford’s world, only gay people and drug users get AIDS, “Oriental” people are taking over, and cyclists who die of head injuries bring it on themselves. Factor in his extracurricular buffoonery—remember the time he got drunk and disorderly at a Leafs game, called a couple of fans “right-wing communist bastards” and then tried to deny the whole episode?—and Sideshow Rob makes Furious George Smither­man look like a Zen master.