After almost a year, the Toronto election is finally over. And what an election it was! We were blessed with five leading candidates who had it all: experience, notoriety, charisma, strong (and oftentimes differing) political platforms, intelligence, and a passion for the city. Hell, if we could have somehow fused the best parts of each candidate together, the resulting entity would have been an unstoppable über-mayor. Instead, we chose David Miller which, some might say, is the next best thing.

Not only were the candidates the best Toronto has seen for many a year, but we couldn’t have asked for a more exciting run-up to the mayoral vote: Tom Jakobek deciding to run in the wake of the MFP leasing inquiry, allegations that Barbara Hall started raising funds before announcing her candidacy, John Nunziata’s bribe claims, the issue of the airport expansion, John Tory attacking David Miller on highway tolls, not to mention the dozens of debates!

I’d like to take a few minutes to congratulate a few people for helping to make this election a great and interesting one. Congratulations go out to:

• David Miller, of course, for running a strong and winning campaign.
• The top five mayoral candidates for giving Torontonians the most exciting election in decades.
• The remaining 40-odd mayoral candidates for taking the incentive to run for public office.
• The following people for running informative and interesting weblogs either focusing on the Toronto election or containing numerous insightful posts about election issues:
  • Andrew Spicer both for his poignant weblog and for assisting the winning Miller team.
  • Rick McGinnis for his last chance city which featured a special series on fringe candidates.
  • James Bow.
  • David Janes.

I also want to thank everyone who tuned into my weblog during the election. Thanks to you, my web statistics have grown tremendously, peaking on Monday to levels not seen since the days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. October was a banner month, bringing in 50% more visitors than the previous record, and November looks to follow suit. I only hope that I can maintain interest without an election to feed off of.