Three Questions for Mayoral Candidates:
The End Result
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
On September 5, 2014, we emailed three questions to the following five candidates for Mayor of Toronto:
Olivia Chow
Rob Ford
Ari Goldkind
David Soknacki
John Tory
The three questions can be read in the original “Three Questions for Mayoral Candidates”, posted here.
The first response came within hours. The John Tory Campaign sent us the following reply:
“Thank you very much for raising your concerns about the Jane-Finch area with John Tory's campaign team. I have forwarded your questions to our policy team for review and response.”
It would seem that the policy team’s review resulted in no response for us.
On September 8, we heard from Ari Goldkind, whose email said:
“Want to chat about these in person, phone, or email?”
Our reply:
“Email would be best, since our goal is to post the replies online. Transcribing a phone call or personal meeting would take a while, and it's best to post this while the campaign is still on.
Also, you wouldn't have to worry about being misquoted. Thank you very much.”
And that was the last we heard from him. To be fair, on September 9, David Soknacki dropped out of the race. This meant Mr. Goldkind suddenly got a lot more media attention.
This also meant we no longer expected a reply from Mr. Soknacki.
On September 12, Rob Ford dropped out of the race, and was replaced by Doug Ford. Given the circumstances that brought about this switch, we didn’t expect an answer from the Ford camp.
On October 8, we heard back from a member of the Olivia Chow Campaign:
“My apologies for not getting back to this sooner. I just happened to find this email in our spam inbox. We'd be thrilled to contribute answers for your website. Is it too late to send them over to you? Please let me know.”
We replied quickly and enthusiastically. And once again, that was the last we heard.
On the one hand, we appreciate that candidates were pressed for time. On the other hand, our questions were deliberately generic. The issues we raised were those that could be raised from many other communities in the city.
Given the amount of money and planning that went into at least a few of these campaigns, it’s a little surprising that none of these candidates had generic statements on hand that could have been modified and sent back to us.
The election is over and John Tory is the new Mayor. At the time of writing (December 8, 2014), he has been on the job officially for about a week. We’ll try to contact him in a different manner in the New Year. Keep reading!
