Edward Keenan: Doug Ford cannot lose, and Toronto cannot win
(The Star Toronto Raptors)

Of course Doug Ford is running for the suddenly vacant leadership of the provincial Progressive Conservative party, as he announced in a press conference in his mother’s Etobicoke basement Monday. I mean, of course he is. He can’t lose. And those of us in Toronto who’d like to see the end of the stranglehold he and his family have held over our politics for almost a decade cannot win. We’re all in for an extra-large dollop of Doug this year, a prospective domination of political headlines from now until October. We can only pray the result doesn’t chain us to him for years longer. Read more:Doug Ford seeks Ontario PC leadership amid party turmoilOpinion | Editorial: Do the Ontario PCs have a death wish? It seems soOpinion | Martin Regg Cohn: Did Progressive Conservatives just give away the game?Let’s back up. Ford had already announced his plans to run for Mayor of Toronto. That seemed to have ended a long period of self-aggrandizing indecision. The former city councillor, brother of the infamous late mayor Rob Ford, and runner up in the 2014 mayoral contest to John Tory, has spent his time out of office flirting with the idea of running for virtually every job that has come open. He told us he was thinking about running to lead the federal Conservative party in 2016. He told us he was thinking about running for leader of the provincial Conservative party back in 2014. He hinted he might run in a city council byelection in 2016. He was thinking last year about running as an MPP in the upcoming election under Patrick Brown. He has long seen himself as the likely solution to every problem. If a high-profile race opens registration anywhere in this country, it seems Doug takes a long hard look at his track shoes. But he seemed to be all-in on the decision to face John Tory in a rematch for the mayor’s office. So much so that he’d already been warned about breaking the rules of campaigning early, before the official el ...