Muni election Aftermath

Some quick thoughts on Ontario's local elections:

• David Miller's reelection is a sad day for the city of Toronto. The man deserved to be defeated, or at least a candidate who would have given him a run for his money. The weak showing by Jane Pitfield and the joke of a candidacy fielded by Stephen LeDrew, makes Toronto seem small time. Adam Vaughan and Michael Thompson ducked questions about their possible future mayoral candidacies last night, I hope they don't them four years from now. Both would make excellent candidates.
• Liberals like me in Toronto-Danforth should be even more depressed than usual this morning. The good news is that Case Ootes won. The bad news is that the total unknown who the NDP backed came within 20 votes of unseating the former Mayor of East York and Deputy Mayor of Toronto. Now, admittedly Ootes is to the right of the Liberals (more of a John Tory PC from what I can tell) but the NDP being able to mount a strong charge in the northern half of Toronto-Danforth where they are supposed to be weak and getting weaker, is bad news. This is especially when it is coupled with Paula Fletcher's cakewalk south of the Danforth.
• An equally depressing day for students. In Toronto's Ward 43, U of T student John Laforet finished fourth. Kudos to John on a well fought and honest campaign. In Kingston, Bill Glover was elected in Sydenham Ward. This is terrible news. Not only did the student candidates lose but Glover is well known for being anti-student and will make any issues between students and the city much worse come next fall. Queen's students clearly still don't want to bother to register to vote in Kingston instead of their hometowns (usually not Kingston). As long as this is true, there is going to be a major gap between Queen's campus and city hall, even if it is only a ten minute walk.
  
• In other bad news, Rob Ford and Howard Moscoe are back. Yuck, yuck, yuck. We need to do something about this incumbency problem. If jokers like that get huge pluralities the system is seriously broken.
  
• On the bright side, Adam Vaughan was elected. Okay, this guy has more hype than Barrack Obama but if he's half the councilor people think he's going to be, he's a blessing to the new council. He also beat Olivia Chow's lapdog Helen Kennedy and proved to the NDP that they don't own Trinity-Spadina. Also, hurricane winds continued to blow in Mississauga as Hazel McCallion was returned to an 11th term. Hazel understands GTA politics better than anyone and is a strong voice for people in Mississauga and across the GTA.