It was the best of jobs, the worst of jobs

An interview with Mayor Rob Ford’s former chief of staff, Mark Towhey.

Whether it’s the ice bucket challenge with Jimmy Kimmel or clashing with his opponents in the 2014 Toronto mayoralty campaign, Mayor Rob Ford continues to be in the news pretty well every day.

Mark Towhey, Ford’s former chair of staff, grew up in Kamloops and had an impressive career in crisis management and other endeavours before working on Ford’s 2010 election campaign and then in City Hall.

Towhey was home in Kamloops to visit family last week, and we had coffee on the sidewalk in front of the Motivo coffee shop and talked about life with Rob Ford, life after Rob Ford, and civic politics in general.

The interview was broadcast Monday morning on CBC Daybreak Kamloops as a segment of Coffee with the Armchair Mayor.

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: So Mark, welcome home, I guess this is home for you, isn’t it?

TOWHEY: It is home, it’s been a long time. I measure everything now in political terms. In 2010 I was on the campaign trail and couldn’t come back, and then when I was working in the mayor’s office I was too busy and last year I was too broke and now I’m back.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: NorKam, or KamHigh?

TOWHEY: KamHigh, class of ’82.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: It’s been just a little bit over a year, now, since you climbed in your car at City Hall in Toronto and left and uttered those, I think, famous words, “I am no longer the chief of staff in the mayor’s office; I did not resign.” What have you been doing since then?

TOWHEY: Well, I spent a lot of time hiding, avoiding the media, and then a fair bit of time figuring out what I was going to do next. And so, I’m in the process now of launching a business, we have some clients, that will be a consulting business focused on strategy and execution, for large corporate clients, small corporate clients, and the odd individual who may or may not be a politician in future, perhaps.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: And you’re in radio, too.

TOWHEY: And I’m doing radio and I’m loving that, I’m on News Talk 10-10 in Toronto.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Hotline, phone-in, outrage, indignation…

TOWHEY: Absolutely, stoking the outrage, indignant callers. It’s a two-hour show, one to three p.m. on Sundays, you can even listen online, at newstalk1010.com.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Looking back at it now, how do you regard that time of your life in the mayor’s office?

TOWHEY: It was probably the best job I’ll ever have, and also at the same time one of the worst jobs I’ll ever have, but working in the mayor’s office in Toronto, it’s a huge city, it’s 53,000 employees, it’s a $13-billion budget, almost three million citizens, and it’s a level of government where you get a chance to actually have influence, and I wasn’t elected to anything, but Rob ford was elected and he had a few specific ideas that he wanted to achieve, and I got to sit down day to day with City staff and figure out how we could do that, and then come up with a political strategy to figure out how council would support it. And we actually got most of that plan done before I left. There were a couple of things that didn’t get done, but it’s incredibly amazing to work at a level of government where you can see the results of your labors in a fairly short amount of time and know that it touches people’s lives on a daily basis.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Yeah, and that’s the great thing about civic government as opposed to other levels of government, I guess, is that you can take a concept and see it through, actually see it conclude and put into effect.

TOWHEY: Yeah, I think if you were a federal politician or a provincial politician the time cycles would be much longer and even if you were able to execute something during the time that you were in office, it would be dispersed across the country and you might not see it every day. In municipal politics you can walk out the door and see it happening.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Our politicians at the civic level here in Kamloops, in the wilds of B.C., tend to have a somewhat different style, I think, than in Toronto in particular. What was it, really, that Rob Ford brought to the job, in the beginning, if I can ask it that way, because he was elected on a platform of stopping the gravy train and fiscal restraint, and so on, what is it about his style that appealed to the centre of the universe in Toronto.

TOWHEY: I think there were a couple of elements. If we go back to 2010, Rob Ford during the campaign was clean and sobre. I was with him every day, all day, and for the first year in office at least he was that way, but he was always an eccentric politican and he always did things differently from everyone else, and people often criticized that, saying he didn’t really get what the job was about, but in fact, I think, what he got was what people wanted, and he understood their desires from the City. Toronto’s a great place to live, it has great amenities, it has wonderful libraries, it has a vibrant arts scene, it’s got great community centres. The average person in Toronto doesn’t feel a burning need to have more of those overall, they just wanted the price to stop going up, year after year after year for the same or lesser services, and Rob Ford understood that. And he also put a high value on customer service in the sense of returning people’s phone calls. And he really did that, and we found during the campaign about 130,000, I think, I can’t remember the exact number, phone numbers that he’d called back in the 10 years as a councilor, and every one of those people who was still alive, who still lived in the city, remembered that. And they valued that, that there was a politician here in a large city that actually cared enough to return their calls, who went to their homes no matter where in the city they were, and at least commiserated with them and at least tried to help them, often he succeeded, many times he didn’t, but it was the first time a politician had actually cared, and that developed, I think, at least the appearance in their minds of a personal relationship, and so he’s family to a lot of people.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Can he win?

TOWHEY: In this campaign? Yeah, he can. He’s doing much better than most people would have thought. I don’t think he will win, but it’s certainly possible.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: What advice would you have, and it might be a difficult question to answer because you are on the other side of the country and you might not be as familiar with your old home town as you used to be, but we have a civic election coming up this year on Nov. 15, anything that you would think they should focus on as to how to approach the job?

TOWHEY: From a political perspective, or policy?

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: I think from a style perspective, what kind of a politician makes a good civic leader?

TOWHEY: I think, first and foremost they have to stay in very close touch with their constituents, and here if you’re elected at large I think that’s more challenging, in a place like Toronto if you’ve got a ward system you’ve got a very small community that you represent, and everybody knows you if you’ve done you job right and you’re impossible to beat if you’ve done your job right, so getting to know your constituents and being seen by them to actually mirror what they care about, and delivering some local results always works. In a place like Kamloops you’ve got the whole city to represent, which is a bit more challenging, but if they can maintain that contact with their constituents, they need to think at the big level, citywide, but they also need to understand that the average person probably doesn’t consume as much media as they think, probably doesn’t think big picture. Their interaction with the City is almost transactional, they open their bills, the only level of government where you actually get an invoice for the service you’ve been provided — you get a property tax bill. Make sure they’ve got their money’s worth.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: What’s next for you, for Mark Towhey when you go home? You’re going to be working on your new company, I take it, busy with other things?

TOWHEY: Yeah, continuing to build my new business, which hopefully will have a big public unveiling in fall, and continuing to work on radio. I’m going back to do the morning show, and my own weekend show.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: No politics, I take it.

TOWHEY: Not right now, I’m staying out of the mayor’s race at this point, and being a political commenter and somewhat neutral observer.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Well, we’re all interested observers as to what’s going on in Toronto.

TOWHEY: It’s the only mayor’s race that will probably be covered globally.

ARMCHAIR MAYOR: Mark, thanks very much.

TOWHEY: Thanks, Mel, take care.