My dad once told me, “A lawyer never asks a question unless he already knows the answer.” I love arguing with my dad, but as an experienced litigator, he certainly doesn’t make it easy, especially when he sticks to the aforementioned legal axiom.
There’s a similar thing in journalism, it’s called Betteridge's law of headlines, and it states that, “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no.'”
The reason this law always holds true is fairly simple: if the answer were "yes" then the headline would just present that as an assertion. By instead presenting the headline as a seemingly open-ended question, the person who wrote the crummy headline can shirk responsibility for whether or not it’s correct.
All of this is to say that, if you’ve stumbled across that sloppily written article with the headline, “Are Ontario mayors violating ethics rules by endorsing Ford?” which suggests that Niagara’s big three mayors are somehow in hot water because they all publicly endorsed Doug Ford, the answer is, no; no they did not violate some ill-defined “ethics rules.”
Mayors have been endorsing political candidates for as long as there have been mayors and political candidates.
This time around, Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati, Welland Mayor Frank Campion, and St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe all endorsed Ford during a splash press conference earlier this month.
This seemed to really tick some people, from PelhamToday readers, to incumbent MPPs like NDP candidate Jeff Burch, who described it as “unethical.” But let’s be real for a second, if those mayors all endorsed NDP leader Marit Stiles, I’m pretty sure Burch would be singing a very different tune.
Setting aside the issue (or rather, the non-issue) of the ethics of mayors endorsing political parties for a moment, I think people need to really step back a moment and look at things with clear eyes, without politics.
Nabbing the endorsement of Niagara’s three biggest mayors is certainly a nice feather for Ford to place in his cap, no question there. But, big picture moment: it doesn’t matter.
It absolutely does not matter one single bit. And that’s not a slight to Siscoe or Diodati or Campion (three certified Good Dudes in my book) it’s just that, at the provincial level, voters have already made up their minds, most are firmly entrenched in one political party or another, and they are not being convinced to change allegiances by the endorsement of their mayor.
People are trying to make hay out of the fact that the mayors are using their “influence” to change voters' minds and get them to vote for Ford. But in what world is there some ardent anti-Ford political guy who sees that his mayor is voting for Ford and suddenly goes, “Oh wow, well, if the mayor of my city is voting for the PCs, then surely I have no choice but to follow suit.” Utter nonsense.
Now, as for whether or not mayors publicly endorsing candidates is actually a wise decision, that’s another matter entirely.
Most of the time, I would argue it’s an unwise decision, due to the risky nature of politics. You don’t wanna be the mayor who endorsed the losing candidate, lest the winning guy decides to give you and your city the cold shoulder.
However, in this case, Niagara’s big three mayors have made the calculated risk assessment and realized that endorsing Ford is a safe move, given that he’s almost certainly going to win; at least according to every single bit of polling data available.
I don’t really see the harm in Niagara mayors wanting to endorse the would-be winner, which would help them bring good fortunes to their respective cities. From what I can tell, they’re simply taking a page from the lawyer’s playbook: never endorse a candidate unless you already know he’s going to win.
James Culic is officially endorsing [insert winning candidate here]. You can yell at him at the bottom of this page, or tell us why politicians endorsing other politicians is good, bad, or ugly in a letter to the editor. And new and improved: You may also comment below.
