Hogtown

Toronto political Boy Wonder Adam Giambrone had the blade dragged across the throat of his bid for election as Toronto’s new mayor, following a Toronto Star interview with one of his mistresses who revealed personal texts and e-mails to the newspaper following a breakdown in the affair.

For the Americans, sex scandals in Canada aren’t particularly common, and they aren’t particularly political. Especially in local politics, who you’re banging matters at lot less than whether or not you’re going to get the potholes fixed. Famously, whether it’s a boy or a girl at the other end of your affair doesn’t really change the equation.

However, and this is the fun part, the Canadian reluctance to push a political lens into the bedroom collapses when you hear that the bedroom is actually a carefully constructed prop.

"You know I will be announcing I have a partner," Giambrone, 32, wrote in a text message to Lucas Dec. 27. "It is someone named Sarah (McQuarrie), who I've been involved with in the past. It is important for the campaign."

Giambrone told Lucas he hoped they could continue to see each other, assuring her: "I had to have someone political."

So far, McQuarrie has elected to support her boyfriend, although her respectable and accomplished early career is getting dragged through the mud along with his. His lover, 19 year old Kristen Lucas, apparently grew angry that she wasn’t going to be recognized as his significant other, and went straight to incandescent when she found out she wasn’t the only one he had on the side.

Now, lots of pundits are stating that he’ll survive the scandal politically, and it represents a speedbump in his career. After all, he wasn’t married, Lucas has already gotten cast as an opportunist who sent ‘sexier photos’ to the papers because she didn’t think the ones they were printing helped her aspiring career as a model, and of course, Toronto is a cosmopolitan urbane city which can accept the oddities of a private life.

I, however, believe this is the last we hear about Giambrone until his defeat in the next municipal election. Giambrone is a card carrying NDP, out of the Canadian left, and guess who the boyish politician owes his key voting bloc to?

Women.

Women who are right now reading him dismissing the lovely but bookish looking McQuarrie as nothing more than a calculated political prop to appeal to voters in a way that the vampish young ingénue Lucas cannot. Women who have female friends and family and coworkers who have been tossed over for younger woman by their partners and spouses. Women who represent the second most active demographic in local politics after seniors.

This is a very good day for anyone interested in being elected city councilor from Ward 18 Davenport in the next election. Just mention that you’re not planning to treat your partner like a blowup doll to appease the public while you chat up a couple of UofT freshmen. It makes for a quick but entertaining debate.