Lady mayoral candidate wants town to sound more hunky dory

“Don’t tell them to grow up and out of it,” are the highlighted lyrics from David Bowie’s “Changes” at the opening of Sarah Thomson’s video press kit for her Toronto mayoralty bid. “Where’s your shame you’ve left us up to our necks in it.” Words that served misfit teenagers since 1971 becomes the anthem for a non-politician to enter the race lacking both a recently experienced entrepreneur, and a woman. And a candidate who went from a couch-surfing gas station attendant to owning her own franchise by age 18 is a story that trumps Mayor David Miller being raised by a struggling single mom who steered him to the right scholarships to graduate from Harvard. But, after a half-decade of Toronto starting to develop affection for itself, does the city want to be told that nothing currently works? Toronto Sun columnist Sue-Ann Levy was first in Thomson’s corner, Marcus Gee of The Globe and Mail kinda likes her, and the Toronto Star gave her the most perfunctory acknowledgment possible. But she knows how to make her own media: Women’s Post (“The National Resource for Professional Women”) boasts a banner ad on its website that makes the publisher’s candidacy look like a movie. Her campaign is also ahead of the curve on Twitter: taking Ward 19 council candidate @HiMYSYeD’s advice that the initial #TeamSarah hashtag risked evoking Sarah Palin, accepting a welcome tweet from fellow outsider mayoral aspirant @roccothevoteTO and, for her idea to build more new subway stations than probably possible, hastening the retirement of @rebelmayor.