Thread by @cityslikr

Been mulling over this circling of the wagons in defense of Nick Kouvalis thing that's going on from Mayor Tory and a gaggle political consultants/strategists/operatives/flacks etc., etc., attempting to divorce who Nick Kouvalis is from what Nick Kouvalis does.

Nick is a good guy. Nick is a decent fellow. He just gets paid to apply his area of expertise to help politicians win their campaign or groups to succesfully push their cause. Nick gets paid to win. It's his business. It's nothing personal.

It's business. It's not personal.

You know where else you hear that? In mob movies.

And another aside.

An acquaintance of mine who does overlapping work with the type Kouvalis practices, once told me: You have to win if you want to govern.

I get that. Not that Pollyannish. You need sharp elbows and a granite jaw to succeed in politics.

You win. You get to govern.

But how exactly does someone like Nick Kouvalis go about winning? His skill is not about building coalitions or creating a workable consensus.

Nick Kouvalis is all about the divide and conquer. Boil down a very concentrated bloc of voters, inciting them by setting them off against what is usually a bigger bloc of voters. Get them angry. Get them out to vote. You don't need a majority. Just a very motivated plurality.

That's what works under our very antiquated, anachronistic, outmoded electoral system. That's what we've seen happen federally, provincially, municipally, for the presidency of the United States. Fine. Whatever. Until we change the system, there it is.

40% of the vote = 50+% of the seats = 100% of the power.

Encite 40% of the voters to get out to the polls, victory is yours. Nick Kouvalis seems to do that very well. Rob Ford. John Tory. Christy Clark in BC. Nick's expertise is in high demand.

Kouvalis's one spectacular failure to date, and the one that has generated the most vitriol toward him, is the failed Kellie Leitch Conservative leadership run. A campaign, incidentally, using ranked ballots, a system Nick Kouvalis has helped fight.

thestar.com/news/city-hall…

A coincidence, surely.

But I digress.

Nick Kouvalis gets paid to help candidates and causes win, and his track record in doing just that is good enough to keep him in demand for his services.

Fine.

You win. You get to govern.

But what happens when you set about governing exactly the same way you won that right to govern?

Nick Kouvalis was Rob Ford's first chief of staff. How did that turn out? It was all about divide and conquer, us-versus them, downtown elite against hardworking taxpayers.

That continued for Ford's entire term in office. And it was picked up again by John Tory who Nick Kouvalis also helped become mayor of Toronto (although was not part of his staff). There was no reaching out to ideologically opposite colleagues or to downtown parts of the city.

And the mayor has continued this kind of divisiveness in his reelection campaign which Kouvalis remains a part of. Tory's campaign team has been relentlessly attacking "radical" city council colleagues (all downtown, all NDP affiliated) and his high profile election opponent.

All the while, this city has come under an existential threat from an aggressively antagonisitc provincial government to little more than meek pushback from Mayor Tory who's concentrating all his firepower on establishing another us-versus them campaign.

You win. You get to govern.

My thinking?

You govern like you win. You win divisively, pitting one group against another, scratching and clawing for just enough voters to secure power? That's exactly how you'll govern and exercise that power.

Likewise, that's business and this is personal?

Bullshit.

How you conduct your business is a reflection of how you conduct your personal life. It's what you do. It's not what you say or what's in your heart. You can't divorce your actions from who you are as a person.

The End.