This October, more than 200 people will vie for the opportunity to help lead the city of Toronto.
Already, many of them are out in their communities, knocking on doors, shaking hands, making their pitches to voters. For most, the path to victory will be hard to navigate. History has often shown the incumbent advantage at city council to be insurmountable.
But that doesn’t mean the 26 races in the Toronto municipal election are foregone conclusions. Three have no incumbent. Three have recognizable challengers descending from Parliament Hill. One features a tough fight between a councillor and his nemesis, an outspoken web commentator. Another will have a rematch between two candidates who virtually tied in 2022. And a councillor who has faced investigation by the OPP will seek re-election.
These are some of the most consequential and uncertain races expected in Toronto this fall, now that the slate is finally set following a dramatic week at the candidate registration desk in city hall.
A three-way race for mayor
If Olivia Chow wants to extend her mayoralty, she’ll have to defeat two high-profile opponents: two-term Beaches councillor Brad Bradford and former federal minister of citizenship and immigration Chris Alexander.
Bradford announced his intention to run nearly a year ago and has made several speeches and campaign promises since the spring. Alexander only entered the race last month and has yet to hold a press conference. Chow’s team has said she won’t start campaigning in earnest until September.
Bradford has thus far challenged Chow on bike lane placement and safety in the city. He has also advocated for involuntary treatment for drug addicts and to rename Sankofa Square “Toronto Square,” despite voting for the initial name change himself.
For months, polls have given the incumbent mayor a steady lead, with Bradford slowly gaining on her. Only when Alexander entered did this trend begin to reverse for the councillor. The progressive mayor has an advantage now, political observers say, with both her strongest challengers competing for conservative voters.
In a press release Thursday, Bradford’s team suggested Alexander’s only goal is to sink the councillor’s campaign, having entered the race to “play spoiler, splitting the vote for change.” The former MP has denied this.
The latest mayoral race polls, released by Liaison Strategies on Thursday, have Chow at 49 per cent, Bradford at 38, Alexander at 11 and “someone else” at three. This poll surveyed 1,000 Torontonians over the phone last week and has a margin of error of 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
There are 50 other candidates for mayor besides the three front-runners.
Open races
Only three councillors from the 2022-26 slate are stepping down. Parkdale-High Park’s Gord Perks and Toronto-Danforth’s Paula Fletcher are retiring with a combined 43 years on council. Bradford is, meanwhile, after a promotion.
All three have heirs apparent.
In the Beaches, former CTV municipal affairs reporter Natalie Johnson is squaring off against late-entrant Nate Erskine-Smith, a former MP for the area fresh off a failed bid for Ontario Liberal leader.
While early polls showed Johnson with a considerable lead, Erskine-Smith immediately became a favourite to win after registering.
Johnson has said her campaign is non-partisan and ideology free. She accused Erskine-Smith this week of running on an “NDP slate,” alluding to him saying the mayor had encouraged him to run. Chow has praised the candidate multiple times in the past, saying she enjoyed working with him while he was briefly housing minister under Justin Trudeau. If elected, Erskine-Smith would be a strong contender to replace Perks as housing committee chair.
Johnson, like Bradford, has the support of centre-right municipal advocacy group ABC. The group’s executive director was out canvassing with her earlier this month.
In Parkdale, community activist and longtime advocate for the homeless Diana Chan McNally is perhaps the top choice for supporters of the outgoing councillor, a veteran progressive who ended his farewell speech at council last month with the words “capitalism is trash.” (McNally said she agreed with him on that.) Her highest profile opponent is Debbie King, Toronto District School Board trustee for the area. Her campaign website lists her as having advocated for student nutrition programs as trustee, which have been one of Chow’s key initiatives.
Fletcher’s surprise retirement announcement this week — only two days after she’d signed up to run for re-election and two days before the nomination deadline — spurred a flurry of registrations in the ward. University-Rosedale Coun. Dianne Saxe is now running there, side-stepping a challenge from former councillor and stepson of the mayor Mike Layton. Also on the ballot will be Fletcher’s mentee and school trustee Sara Ehrhardt, lawyer Caryma Sa’d, known for filming protests, and former councillor Mary Fragedakis, who lost to Fletcher in the 2018 election.
Rivalries
Three incumbent candidates are about to be tested by some fierce rivals.
Frances Nunziata is seeking her ninth council term in York South-Weston. In 2022, she was just 94 votes away from losing her first election since becoming a school board trustee in 1985. Now, the woman who almost defeated her, tenant advocate Chiara Padovani, is back for another round.
After the city’s integrity commissioner found Nunziata’s chief of staff gathered contact information of at least 8,000 local residents without their consent, and emailed some of them asking for their vote — in contravention of council’s code of conduct, which prohibits using city resources for a campaign — Padovani publicly accused the councillor of cheating and questioned whether the election would have gone differently had Nunziata followed the rules.
The councillor apologized after the report was released and maintained that she had no knowledge of her staff’s action. The integrity commissioner wrote that he found no evidence to suggest Nunziata instructed her staff to do this.
“I’ve been waiting four years for this rematch,” Padovani said after registering.
Toronto Centre Coun. Chris Moise is up against a man he accuses of having harassed him and his staff: Daniel Tate, the executive director of IntegrityTO, a civic advocacy group that posts irreverent critiques of councillors and videos of homeless people in crisis. IntegrityTO has also posted a video to Instagram featuring a local comedian performing a racist caricature of the mayor.
Earlier this year, the integrity commissioner found that Moise violated the code of conduct in a heated exchange he had with Tate in 2025. In this interaction, which Tate filmed, Moise accused him of harassment and said he held a “white supremacy view.” While the commissioner found the councillor acted in a “derogatory manner,” he did not recommend a penalty and council did not move to punish him either.
Tate first got involved with municipal politics when he rallied against the renaming of Dundas Square to Sankofa Square, which Moise led.
Freshman Coun. Parthi Kandavel of Scarborough Southwest, meanwhile, has denied wrongdoing, amid an OPP investigation into his dealings with developers.
Now, with the councillor facing scrutiny, the second place finisher in that ward’s byelection race in 2023, engineer Kevin Rupasinghe, is ready for round two. Rupasinghe lost by just 787 votes last time. In an interview with TorontoToday, the challenger said his professional background makes him a good candidate for elected office.
“Engineers are expected to have the highest ideals of personal honour and personal integrity, and act with the highest principles of ethical conduct,” he said.
