Photo courtesy: BlogTO

The folks at BlogTO took some time to interview some of the more colourful individuals running to be the next mayor of Toronto:

“My friend and I met him at his home. It was nice place around the Beach, and full of paintings (one was by a member of the Romanovs, he said.) There was also a Swastika and a painting of SS soldiers on his wall. His teenage daughter was there too–a polite and kind looking girl.

In 1974, Andrews placed a distant second to David Crombie in the mayor’s race. However, election laws at the time allowed the runner up to take over in case the mayor’s position became vacant. To prevent someone like Andrews from ever doing so, City Hall changed that rule after the election.”

Read the rest of the interview here.

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Better Ballots honcho Dave Meslin appeared on The Agenda with Steve Paikin to discuss electoral reform at the City of Toronto and his Better Ballots initiative.

Related: You can also watch iVoteToronto’s Desmond Cole talk about why non-citizens should be allowed to vote.

Blogger John Laforet disagrees with experts who think Adam Giambrone YouTube pre-launch video was a mistake:

“Love him or hate him, or even his video for that matter, Giambrone’s campaign in my opinion has demonstrated the best understanding of social media of all major campaigns in the race so far. Sure the video content is doesn’t necessarily paint Giambrone looking mayoral but it has been seen by over 30,000 people in just over a day. Compare with George Smitherman’s official launch video on his youtube page with closer to 500 people, or Rocco Rossi’s Empire Club speech with around 400 viewers over a considerably longer period of time.”

Read the rest of his post here.

The National Post showed mayoral candidate Adam Giambrone’s YouTube video to a mixed panel of professionals and their verdict: Adam missed the mark:

“Mr. Valiquette warned that production values have to be higher than in this first video and that Mr. Giambrone, 32, who hints in the video he will run for mayor, may have misunderstood the complexities of social media viewers.

“It recognized that humour is an important part of online videos but it is not necessarily an important part of online political videos. He understands what social media [are] about but didn’t apply it properly to his category,” he said.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Note: Giambrone’s video has just over 37,000 views and nearly 1000 comments on the YouTube page alone.

After the successful release of a tongue-in-cheek- pre-launch video staring TTC Chair Adam Giambrone,  rival candidates are lining up to offer comment:

“From our perspective, the only logical rationale for the video is that … it’s an obvious attempt on the part of Adam’s organizers to try to change the channel from his sorry record at the TTC,” said Stefan Baranski, a spokesman for George Smitherman, who launched his bid for Toronto’s mayoralty on Jan. 8. “It’s been another week of apologies and bad news for the transit commission.”

Some sharp eyes over at Spacing Magazine found a YouTube video that looks like the invite video for the Adam Giambrone campaign launch.  Light hearted and funny out of the gate, it has the online community and the media buzzing:

‘I’m ready,’ Giambrone declares in YouTube video (Toronto Star)

Adam Giambrone Wants You To Know That He’s Ready! (Torontoist)

Mayors aren’t made in a day: Adam Giambrone’s launch video (National Post)

Mayor’s Race Heats Up (Town Crier)