Sarah Thomson crowdsources her biggest political decision

A year ago, when Twitter was gaining the kind of traction that led every newspaper to write about it every day, the notion that a mayoral candidate in the 2010 Toronto municipal election would do all of their campaigning 140 characters at a time would have seemed a bit less preposterous. Sarah Thomson knows better than to rely on the medium, of course — her own publication, Women’s Post, features her on the front cover, much to the dismay of the head of the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors. She had every intention of spotlighting any lady that ran for the job, it just turned out the one at the top of the masthead is the only woman currently registered on a ballot that, as of today, also includes 28 men. (Adam Giambrone, incidentally, has still not technically withdrawn.) The printed campaign speech was paid for, at whatever price Thomson charges for editorial content in her business-boosting circular — which is partly distributed in rusty pink boxes around town, for which proper permits were presumably obtained. But it’s too snowy to do anything but stay home and watch the Winter Olympics, and election day is eight months away, so what else for a candidate to do but fiddle around with the internet? Rocco Rossi is welcoming detractors to argue with him on his blog — itself a breakthrough strategy compared to past would-be mayors — but @ThomsonTO is ready to mix it up in real-time with anyone, even if she has to start the exchange herself.

The tune used for Thomson’s campaign kick-off video was “Changes” by David Bowie — the anthem of two or three generations of confused teenagers. But applying that ’70s classic rock can come with consequences: John McCain’s campaign was smacked down by Jackson Browne, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty and Van Halen at various points in 2008, for using their songs in one context or another. Worse still, is assuming the sisterhood is on your side — given how the sisters of “Heart” objected to Sarah Palin blasting “Barracuda” at the Republican National Convention. But since when does an outsider running for mayor of Toronto need an identifiable theme song? Ben Kerr, the perennial folk singing candidate who died in 2005, would have written several of them for her by now.