Mayoral candidate Keith Cole talks about the arts.

As I sat at The Village Idiot at the end of September with the charming and humourous Toronto Mayoral candidate Keith Cole, he ordered me a tea and flattered our server by under-estimating the 40-ish man’s age by half and grinning widely as he handed out a campaign poster. On the poster Cole is illustrated (quite beautifully, should be noted) dressed in a flowery suit and hat shaped like the city hall, spreading chicken feed. It proudly boasts, Keith Cole for Mayor with the curious byline, Get Over It. This sets the tone for the entire campaign.Keith is a vocal arts advocate and has no delusion that he is going to win the Mayor’s office. Accused of vote splitting, this (now) top 6 candidate has compared the past 6 years of city governance to a dry-cough that just won’t get better. He isn’t the lunatic candidate that you might anticipate an openly promiscuous, drag queen with no history in politics to be. Well spoken, clever and well educated on the reality of the City’s politics, Cole allows the top polling candidates to squabble about the TTC and parking tickets while he takes every opportunity to emphasis how equally important arts and culture should be to Toronto.

After wrapping up flirtatiously promoting his mayoral candidacy, the server gladly accepts a promotional button and exclaims ‘I was there when it started!’
Keith explained that it actually started in December of 2009 when his friends organized a dinner party to encourage him to run for office. After initially brushing off the suggestion, he realized how seriously his friend’s had considered the proposition. After a 24 mulling-over of the idea, Keith decided to go for it. As his initial team went from well-staffed to no-staff, Cole became a one man marketing, advertising, campaign managing dynamo. He credits his success to starting the campaign early in the race, having all his imagery selected and strategy picked out.

Cole: “The thing that I did that was smart was that I focused on 4 things: Art, civic engagement, bicycles, and public health. I don’t know anything about property taxes, so I am just going to focus on things that I know.”His honesty is reassuring, he’s not trying to fool you. Cole is a teacher at OCAD and legendary performer both on and off Church Street, a self-made top 6 candidate bold enough to campaign in drag, a year round cyclist and a gay man who has seen members of the queer community depend on public health. His campaign is built around what is truly important to him, joking that all the election really comes down to potholes and garbage collection anyway.

Furious about a web poll gone hijacked, Cole blasted ArtsVote for allowing their voting tool to be vulnerable to tampering. Before the hijacking, he was in the lead with voters supporting Cole to participate in the ArtsVote mediated debate about arts funding. The results were tossed out after the poll attack which resulted in a different candidate being selected to participate.

Cole: “ArtsVote is more about the big guys; TIFF, The National Ballet, AGO, luminato. There is no room for the little painter, or the 21 year-old independent dancer. That’s my job, to look after those people; to give them a voice. So it’s unfortunate that I couldn’t be a part of it because they screwed up that poll. It was a bad move on their behalf.”

Cole’s ideal Toronto embraces forward-thinking and compassion, and he knows that there is a long way to go. Recalling the shock he experienced after Rob Ford declared his negative stance on immigration, “while that was shocking, it wasn’t as shocking as to when the audience applauded. So, it’s not so much him… it’s collectively us.”

Despite the gloom that Ford could impose on Toronto’s beloved arts and culture communities, Keith remains positive that you will never stop a painter from painting.

Read more about Keith Cole’s campaign on his website: http://www.keithcole.ca
Please vote on October 25th.