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Back to The renaissance of Rocco Rossi The renaissance of Rocco Rossi September 03, 2010

Robyn Doolittle

From where campaign manager Sachin Aggarwal stood, no amount of spin was going to get Rocco Rossi to city hall.

After seven grueling and expensive months, Rossi had fallen to last place in the polls, with 6 per cent of the decided vote. The campaign team had erred early on, positioning themselves as the conservative alternative to .

Then along came Rob Ford and Sarah Thomson, and suddenly right of centre was a very crowded place to be.

Aggarwal turned to his longtime friend and — according to several people involved — said: “Rocco, I think you’re the best candidate, but with these numbers you can’t win. You should do the right thing, throw your support behind George and stop Rob Ford from becoming mayor.” Rocco Rossi's candidacy seemed to have faded into irrelevance until this past week, when Warren Kinsella joined the team and the campaign roared to new life. For two weeks Rossi went back and forth. STEVE RUSSELL/ STAR FILE PHOTO

Do you bow out gracefully, do right by a fellow Liberal and look towards a provincial run? Or do you scrap everything, start over, and honour your word to stay until the end?

The weekend of Aug. 21, Aggarwal got the call. He was out. Conservative strategist Bernie Morton was in. And Rocco Rossi was going for it.

Thus began the renaissance of the Rossi brand.

They would go big. They would go bold. His political opponents say they’ve gone dirty.

Whatever you want to call it, ever since the revamped Rossi campaign launched this week, the candidate has dominated the news cycle.

From Rossi’s pledge on Monday to fight for voter recall legislation, to a brow-raising poll on Wednesday that showed the candidate vaulting into third, to accusations on Thursday that Smitherman “verbally abused” a young female Rossi volunteer, in less than a week, Morton has managed to create momentum in a campaign that had been teetering on collapse.

“Bernie has a different way of doing things,” said political adviser Scott Munnoch. “It’s time to ramp things up and try to get people’s attention.”

The strategy shift had consequences. Rossi’s team was initially about 50/50 Liberals and Tories. With Aggarwal’s ousting — he remains policy chief, although insiders say his role is in name only — came a lot of hurt feelings. When reached in Germany, Aggarwal declined to comment.

At least six Liberals stepped aside. Some are in talks with the Smitherman campaign. Others are waiting to see how things go. Today, the campaign is about two-thirds Conservative.

Then, last week, prized Liberal spin doctor Warren Kinsella joined the campaign.

“I think a lot of people were nervous at first, but when Warren (Kinsella) signed on, that helped a lot,” said one Liberal staffer who had debated stepping aside.

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In early August, both Morton and Kinsella had been waiting in the wings to back should he decide to run. Around this time the tension had started between Rossi and Aggarwal.

When Tory announced he was definitely, absolutely, staying out of it, Rossi phoned Morton.

“I thought: Who would be the best candidate? Hands down I thought the person who would be best for Toronto is Rocco,” said Morton.

It was a win-win for Morton and Kinsella. If they pulled it off, they would be heroes. If they lost, people would say it was too late to be saved.

Morton acknowledges the road ahead is bumpy, but he says he never would have agreed if he didn’t see a path to victory.

In mid-July, an internal poll commissioned by a Tory supporter showed Rossi at 6 per cent. Hundreds of thousands had been spent trying to build name recognition, but still voters didn’t know much about the candidate. As recently as last Saturday, Rossi was at 5 per cent, according to a Star-Angus Reid poll.

Morton would recast Rossi as a socially liberal, tight-fisted business executive — not merely a political outsider. The candidate’s biggest hurdle with voters is his inexperience with local politics, so the campaign would try to tap into the frustrations people have with municipal government as an institution.

This week Rossi promised to fight for term limits and voter recall rights. On Wednesday, Forum Research released a poll in which 73 per cent of respondents supported the recall plan. The timing of the poll, which also put Rossi at 15 per cent, has been the subject of political gossip. An hour before its release, Kinsella posted “Surprising poll coming out” on Twitter.

The $3,000 survey, begun just hours after Rossi’s Monday recall announcement, was paid for by aviation executive Victor Pappalardo. Pappalardo said that while he has attended numerous Rossi events, he commissioned the poll on his own and he is still deciding between two candidates.

And while Rossi rode a surge of support on recall, Smitherman’s camp made a damaging tactical error.

Thursday morning, Smitherman proposed a modest business property tax hike to fund youth programs — a politically curious idea given the anti-taxation climate. The campaign quickly back-pedaled, but not before Rossi labeled him an out-of-touch flip-flopper.

By that evening’s debate, another scandal. Rossi’s team accused Smitherman of verbally attacking a volunteer, who handed Smitherman a leaflet questioning his record. Smitherman says he told the woman to “screw off” and that the Rossi team had deliberately sent her to start trouble.

“He’s hired the guy who literally wrote the book on dirty politics in Canada — so people should expect to see more dirty tricks from Rocco Rossi,” said Bruce Davis, Smitherman’s campaign manager.

Kinsella has a different theory.

“Rocco has tripled his support — tripled it… Smitherman can now see Rocco’s big smile very clearly in his rear-view mirror. He and his team — the Barbara Hall campaign team — are very nervous.”

http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/856676 9/3/2010