Ex-Toronto Sun and True North journalist Anthony Furey lost his bid for Toronto city council Monday night after being the target of a concerted smear campaign led by former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne and the group that worked overtime to put our NDP mayor in office.
Furey took 7,343 of the votes in the Don Valley West by-election compared to his opponent and the now departing chairman of the Toronto District School Board, Rachel Chernos-Lin, who captured 12,889 votes.
Only 32% of the eligible voters in this expansive riding — which takes in the Bridle Path and Lawrence Park as well as Thorncliffe Park — turned up to vote.
Furey — who’d been pounding the pavement since late July— conceded defeat by wishing Chernos-Lin well in her new venture. He also admitted that he’d had to deal with a campaign of voter suppression by forces that included Progress Toronto, the left-wing group that is a partner in Mayor Olivia Chow’s foundation, Institute for Change Leaders.
While Jewish, the former TDSB chairman did nothing while anti-Semitic incidents in TDSB classrooms increased 300% under her watch.
Violence in schools was and is also rampant.
Critics alleged she bullied trustees and other opponents who disagreed with her.
Furey, who ran on a common sense platform promising to tackle the waste of money at City Hall, to bring accountability to city affairs and to address gridlock (and the proliferation of bike lanes), was initially targeted by Wynne and Liberal activist Howard Brown.
Wynne’s wife, Jane Rounthwaite, ran Chernos-Lin’s campaign.
In September, Wynne went on the air and claimed Furey was “Islamophobic, anti-trans, anti-gay and a bigot” — smears replicated in a September hit piece by Toronto Star reporter and bike lane activist Ben Spurr.
In early October, Progress Toronto — whose executive director and several of its organizers are virulently anti-Israel — took over where Wynne left off, canvassing and disseminating hate literature in the riding about Furey before they even officially registered as a third-party advertiser.
Their flyer and online campaign continued right up to the day before election day when canvassers were seen physically attacking a videographer for asking them questions.
On Monday evening after the count, they went online to brag about how they brought about Furey’s downfall:
Their tweets were reposted by David Rider of the Toronto Star, who celebrated Furey’s demise.
Many weighed in online about Progress Toronto’s questionable ties to the mayor and how Toronto has definitely taken a turn to the hard left.
