Is John Tory ready to concede that his 15 minutes is up—again?

Is John Tory ready to concede that his 15 minutes is up—again?

Early on, we called John Tory‘s mayoral indecision a “Hamlet act.” Well, it now looks like Tory might finally have read the play, only to discover what the price of waffling can be. According to a Toronto Star blog, Tory is now leaning—once again—towards no.

The source said his enthusiasm has waned, apparently after hearing sobering advice that he should have announced and started organizing earlier, the reality that most of his advisers are committed to other candidates and won’t defect, and that [Rob] Ford won’t drop out under any circumstances. In fact, Ford, a past ardent Tory supporter who entered the race only after Tory said in January he was staying out, has been signalling that his old friend would be in for a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle battle.

Tory is also aware of the haunting prospect of coming up short yet again. After losing a provincial byelection last year, he resigned as leader of Ontario’s PC party, and in 2003, Tory lost the mayoral election to David Miller.

Tory has oscillated pretty wildly throughout 2010, so we’re most inclined to take his lastest musings with a grain of salt (he’s got another month before the city’s registration closes). But if Tory was only leaning towards running because he thought Ford would drop out, this starts to feel more solid.  Ford gives every appearance of being in this race for the duration, and not-so-gently let it slip that Tory would get no quarter from Ford and his weird YouTube ads.

This whole Tory situation reminds us of when, in the midst of the pitched battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats in the U.S. started yearning for Al Gore to jump in to the race and unite both sides. Of course, that never happened and the Web-savvy upstart beat the candidate who long ago thought she had the thing wrapped up.

Of course, we’re not sure if this counts as Web-savvy.

• Consultations lead Tory to reconsider mayoral run [Toronto Star]