The community organizer says she thinks her previous attempts have given her name recogntion in the fight for Toronto’s Ward 9 Davenport.
She wasn’t upset in 2003 when she was defeated in her debut campaign by fewer than 800 votes, she claims, nor three years later when she ran again and was beaten by fewer than 300.? Bravo insists that one didn’t sting either.
“I’d love to say this was a 20-year plan to win,” joked Bravo while out door-knocking in Weston-Pelham Park late last month. But Bravo, a community organizer who until this month was a director at progressive think tank the Broadbent Institute, acknowledges her previous campaigns, along with years of local advocacy, have given her valuable name recognition in Davenport .
Like Bravo, he has strong roots in the community, and for the past seven years has held leadership roles at the Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood and Community Health Centre. But the mayor, who has governed from the centre-right, isn’t as popular in Davenport as he is elsewhere in the city — he had 43 per cent support there in the 2018 election, compared to 63 per cent city-wide — and Gonzales, who frames his policies as progressive, has faced some blowback for accepting Tory’s support.