What makes a great Toronto mayor? Compromise

Expect Boxing Day-style lineups at city hall on Thursday as registration officially opens for candidates who plan to run in Toronto’s 2014 mayoral election. Even with the prospect of a long-slog campaign and a mega-crowded field — 40 candidates ran for the top office in 2010 — a lot of people are going to try to get this job.

But consider this: Do we even know what the job is? For those of us who don’t plan to put our name on the ballot, we’ll spend much of the next year conducting a very long job interview. So it’s important to think about the qualifications. What makes someone a truly great mayor?

Some voters will seize on candidates who talk tough about supposed excesses of government. Others will focus on candidates with big dreams and expansive ideas.

Many will look for business acumen, or just a trustworthy face.

Then there will be those who just want someone who can respond to their problems, whether it’s a pothole or a downed power line in an ice storm.

These are all good things to consider, but there’s another qualification candidates need to bring to the table — one that I don’t think gets enough play.

The mayor, more than anything else, has to be a consensus-builder.

They have to know how to compromise.

Even before we heard about surveillance planes and crack cocaine, it was his inability to build that consensus and compromise that troubled Mayor Rob Ford’s mayoralty and limited his list of accomplishments mostly to things he passed in his first couple of months in office.

His legendary refusal to compromise led to a chronic inability to do much of anything. He lost about half the votes on major items he brought to council.

The office of mayor is simply not empowered to bring in rapid change. The structures of government at city hall mean that one person acting alone is virtually powerless. The elected mayor will have just one vote on a 45-member city council — a council that operates without formalized political parties. Nothing can happen without a majority vote, and that means compromise and incremental change — always.

Any candidate with bluster and big promises is only worth voting for if they can explain how exactly they plan to get their ideas through council. Ideas without implementation are just noise.

Put side-by-side, a candidate who promises compromise and consensus may not look like much compared to the guy promising free subways. But the difference is that the person talking about consensus will be able to get things done. In a city that needs a lot less talk and a lot more action on dozens of critical issues, that’s important. That’s the job.