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The enigma that is Rob Ford's new chief of staff
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY AND KELLY GRANT
Last updated Monday, Feb. 07, 2011 10:46AM EST
Mayor Rob Ford's office. Friday afternoon, Jan. 21
Behind the newly locked wooden doors of the mayor's office stand three men: chief of staff Nick Kouvalis, policy adviser Andrew Pask, and Mr. Ford. Mr. Kouvalis and Mr. Pask, two of the most important men in Mr. Ford's political life, have been locking horns constantly.
Mr. Ford likes - and owes - them both: Mr. Pask, long-time executive assistant in Mr. Ford's council office, left a good job at Bell Mobility to join the mayor in his new digs. Mr. Kouvalis, a hard-nosed Conservative strategist, propelled Mr. Ford to his election-night triumph and some impressive early wins at Toronto city council.
Always a temporary chief of staff, Mr. Kouvalis has already quietly tendered his resignation, but the ongoing dispute with Mr. Pask made it tough for him to stay until mid-March as planned, according to sources familiar with the situation.
So when another disagreement lands the pair in Mr. Ford's office, Mr. Kouvalis gives the mayor an ultimatum: Either Mr. Pask goes, or I do. (As of press time, Mr. Kouvalis, Mr. Pask and the mayor's press secretary all declined to comment on this story.)
Exit stage right both Mr. Pask and Mr. Kouvalis, the highly political, ruthlessly strategic campaign manager whose tactics led Mr. Ford to a landslide election victory Oct. 25, but who had trouble transitioning to the feather-smoothing, cat-herding diplomacy required in a party-free city hall.
Enter upstage centre Amir Remtulla, returning to the municipal-politics fold after a decade as a Molson Coors executive, a Tanzanian immigrant from Flemingdon Park who rose through the ranks of Toronto and Ontario conservative politics.
Stage-managing Fortress Ford now rests with the 41-year-old father of two - staying on message and pushing through an ambitious agenda while attempting to reach out to a council still sharply divided along left-right lines.
It won't be easy: With a few early victories behind him, Mr. Ford faces hurdles in the form of union battles and an as-yet-unrealized, revamped version of "transportation city" - not to mention a 2012 budget that promises to hurt far more than this year's.
But Mr. Remtulla comes highly recommended.
Case Ootes, the crusty right-wing councillor who served as Mel Lastman's deputy-mayor speaks of his former executive assistant as one might a son or particularly precocious protégé.
"He has great political instincts and great people skills. ... I was always impressed with the fact that he challenged me."
Maybe you'd expect him to say that - Mr. Ootes and Mr. Remtulla, after all, go way back: The elder statesman was among those hunting for someone to work in Progressive Conservative MPP Dave Johnson's Flemingdon Park constituency office in the early 1990s.
And here was Mr. Remtulla, a former scout leader who had moved from Dar Es Salaam to Flemingdon Park with his parents close to two decades earlier. He was hired.
Several years and a Harris government later, Mr. Ootes, deputy mayor of a newly amalgamated Toronto, needed an executive assistant. He turned to Mr. Remtulla, then still ensconced in Queen's Park. "And I certainly wasn't disappointed."
Even Adam Vaughan, the lefty downtown councillor who has acted as gadfly to the Ford brothers since the election, has nothing but good things to say about mayor's incoming chief of staff.
"He gets the complexity of the place. ... Amir's not one of those people to be a bull in a china shop. He understands it's about making the city work."
For all that, however, Mr. Remtulla is not one to boast. Or talk about himself, in fact. At all.
He refused repeated interview requests following the announcement he'll soon be taking on the chief-of-staff mantle. He has absolutely zero desire to be the centre of attention. That's not his job, he says.
That doesn't come as a huge surprise to those who know him: Councillor Joe Mihevc remembers Mr. Remtulla as the "strong, silent type" from his last city hall stint.
But what councillors are hoping for, if not exactly mayoral TLC, is what Mr. Mihevc calls "a much more consultative, team- and group-building approach."
When newbie centrist councillors Michelle Berardinetti and Jaye Robinson found themselves on Mr. Ford's right-heavy executive committee, they half expected their votes to be mercilessly whipped.
They were pleasantly surprised to be left to their own devices, Ms. Berardinetti says. But "honestly, Jaye and I really feel it would be better to get more communication, because we're like, 'Where are we going with this one?'"
Even budget chief Mike Del Grande doesn't "see much of Rob," he says.
"I bump into him and he goes, 'How's it going, buddy?' That's about it. I tell him I haven't removed the windows from my office and jumped out yet. The guy's a busy guy. I don't probably see as much of him as I did as a councillor."
Councillor Doug Ford, the mayor's jovial big brother, is perplexed when asked why the mayor has been somewhat cloistered - even though he is the Ford doing the interview for this story, not his brother.
The elder Mr. Ford wouldn't comment on Mr. Kouvalis's or Mr. Pask's departure, except to say Mr. Kouvalis remains on good terms with the brothers.
Ironically, Mr. Ford's predecessor and political opposite faced the same communication problem for the opposite reason: David Miller's hands-on approach left even some of his more loyal councillors feeling in the dark.
"He could have been more consultative," says now-retired Howard Moscoe. "He made decisions and then expected people to line up without a lot of discussion."
Mel Lastman was the one who really shone at delegating responsibilities, putting some of his staunchest opponents - Olivia Chow and Mr. Moscoe among them - in prominent positions.
That's thanks in large part to decisions made by his chiefs of staff. Alan Slobodsky, who served under Mr. Lastman, calls his former position "the best job there is at the city."
"There's a difference between running an election and governing," he says of Mr. Ford's chief-of-staff switch.
Should the new chief of staff's marching orders include reaching out to recalcitrant councillors?
Mr. Slobodsky pauses.
"'Reach out' is probably not the right word. 'Hear them,' 'listen to them' is probably better.
"'Reach out' means you've got to compromise with them. And I'm not sure that's going to happen in this administration."
Published on Friday, Feb. 04, 2011 6:06PM EST
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