The dramatic withdrawal of Coun. Adam Giambrone from the mayoral race following admissions of infidelity has significantly changed the battle to replace Mayor David Miller, says a political insider.

"He was the anointed candidate for the left. He was the NDP 's candidate, so he had a formidable machine behind him," Warren Kinsella, a Liberal strategist, told CTV News Channel's Power Play on Wednesday from Toronto.

Giambrone is a one-time federal NDP president.

"The question that everybody is asking here today is that now that the left's candidate is gone, who's it going to be," he said.

Although a federal Grit, Kinsella had supported former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory's unsuccessful 2003 run for mayor.

Mitch Kosny, interim director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning, told ctvtoronto.ca on Wednesday that Giambrone's flameout removes a "reasonably competitive city councillor," although he noted deputy mayor Joe Pantalone is still in the race.

Pantalone (Ward 19, Trinity-Spadina) once ran provincially as an NDP candidate and is generally considered part of city council's progressive wing. He isn't a frontrunner at this point, although plenty of campaigning remains before the Oct. 25 vote.

Two of the perceived leading candidates, Rocco Rossi and George Smitherman, are relative city hall outsiders. Smitherman once served as chief of staff to former mayor Barbara Hall, but that was almost 15 years ago.

Smitherman, identified as the clear frontrunner in a mid-January poll, has played a relatively defensive game since officially joining the race.

Rossi has been much more aggressive. He supports right-leaning policies such as:

  • selling off Toronto Hydro and other city assets
  • building a pedestrian tunnel to the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport
  • removing bicycle lanes from major thoroughfares and pushing them to side streets
  • reviewing Transit City, the network of mostly above-ground light-rail transit

All three of those positions put Rossi in opposition to Mayor David Miller, who announced last fall he wouldn't be seeking re-election in the Oct. 25 vote.

Giambrone supported virtually all of Miller's major policies. In a notorious YouTube video released before Giambrone officially announced his candidacy on Feb. 1, the TTC chair said to a mirror, "It's Transit City, Stupid."

Kosny said Pantalone is now the likely heir to the Miller legacy -- although more the second-term, more moderate Miller than the left-wing reformer of the 2003 campaign.

When he joined the race in mid-January, Pantalone referred to Toronto as a "beautiful flower that needs to be nurtured." Pantalone warned against drastically shifting the city's direction.

But Pantalone, while undoubtedly experienced and capable, has been on council for 28 years. Kosny noted that Giambrone had been on council only seven years. "He represented newer rather than older," in terms of a sense of what Toronto is about, he said.

Neil Thomlinson, chair of Ryerson's department of politics and public administration, offers this possibility: The left parks its votes with Pantalone but abandons him if it senses he has no chance to win and someone they hate could be heading for victory.

"That's what happened to Barbara Hall" when Miller defeated Tory in 2003, he said.

Another question is whether another serious candidate could yet emerge to enter the race and fill the left-wing hole left by Giambrone's departure. For example, budget chief Shelley Carroll had been touted by some as a progressive mayoral candidate, but she took herself out of the competition.

Kosny said that in one sense, the vote is more than eight months away, with a deadline of Sept. 10 at 2 p.m. to register. But in another, time is drawing short.

"I think the big problem that people will have is the money," Thomlinson said, noting it can cost at least $1 million to run a campaign. Some put the figure at $1.5 to $1.7 million.

If someone could inherit Giambrone's team, it would make life a lot easier, he said.

Thomlinson said so much at this point is simply "reading tea leaves."

But if no new strong left candidate comes in, if Pantalone doesn't catch fire and the race becomes a fight between Rossi and Smitherman, the city's direction could shift dramatically away from that of the Miller years.

"That is the real question," Thomlinson said. "And I think given the way things are looking right now, that's a very likely scenario."