Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story (12 page)

After a lacklustre academic record, Kouvalis worked blue-collar jobs, eventually landing on the Chrysler assembly line. It wasn’t the life for him. When the workday was done, Kouvalis would come home and start planning his escape. He didn’t want to spend his life making money for someone else. First, he tried running an electronic sales and repair company. After it failed, he launched a car service. The business showed promise, but Kouvalis was having trouble getting the right kind of insurance. A friend recommended he start associating with some local politicians to see if they could help speed things along. So, in November 2003, he joined the federal Conservative Party. In politics, he found his calling.

Kouvalis started out selling party memberships. He was really good at it. He volunteered with Belinda Stronach’s leadership campaign. (“I was new. I didn’t know any better,” he jokes now.) He thought the plotting, the twists and turns, of politics was fun. He wanted to do it for a living. He dug through campaign financial records and was astonished at how much money was being spent on phone work such as polling and get-out-the-vote calls. He opened a call centre out of his living room with some cheap VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology. The more work he did with the Conservative Party, the more business came his way.

Kouvalis met his future mentor and business partner, Richard Ciano, during the 2004 federal election. Ciano was managing Peter Van Loan’s federal campaign, and Kouvalis was the campaign manager for Jeff Watson, who was running in the riding of Essex, outside Windsor. Kouvalis’s and Ciano’s candidates both won.

Even in those early days, Kouvalis attracted controversy. Despite his win, Watson had a falling-out with Kouvalis that got personal fast. In the next election, Kouvalis went to work in a neighbouring riding for another Conservative candidate. Hostilities with Watson escalated. In a dramatic climax, Kouvalis was charged in the summer of 2005 with threatening to kill Watson. A year and a half later, he was acquitted. Justice Lloyd Dean said he was “troubled” by evidence that the charges might have been politically motivated.

Kouvalis didn’t hold a grudge. Politics was a dirty sport.

Such a combative background meant Kouvalis was wellsuited to running Rob Ford’s mayoral campaign and trying to control the formidable Doug. He wasn’t afraid to say no to
the older Ford brother, or threaten to resign if the pushback continued. Once Richard Ciano stepped aside, Kouvalis packed his suitcase and moved into the Deco office. The Fords put him up in an empty room above the factory floor. It had a mattress, an ironing board, a lamp, and little else. He would shower with the factory workers. This would be his home for the next six months. The Fords are cheap, but Kouvalis didn’t mind if it meant saving the campaign a buck or two.

Despite the internal campaign hiccups, Ford was doing well with the public. In mid-April, just weeks after declaring his candidacy, he was sitting in second place. A
Toronto Star
– Angus Reid poll put George Smitherman at 34 percent, Ford at 27 percent, and Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone at 14 percent. The surge caught the competition off guard. During the first debate—held on March 29, four days after Ford entered the race—Smitherman had barely bothered with the Etobicoke councillor. He trained his fire on business executive Rocco Rossi. Rossi, the former national director of the federal Liberal Party, had run John Tory’s mayoral campaign against David Miller in 2003. With Tory staying out, Rossi had been hoping to inherit that right-of-centre base. On policy, Rossi was the change people wanted. But on delivery, he couldn’t connect. Rossi was polling fourth, at 13 percent, above the only woman in the race, Sarah Thomson. “This is when I first started to get worried,” said Stefan Baranski, Smitherman’s director of communications. “The trend lines were going in the wrong way.”

Smitherman corrected course at the May 5 Toronto Real Estate Board debate. On stage, Smitherman questioned Ford’s fitness for the job of mayor after his 2006 comments about AIDS and the gay community. “You said, on the floor of council, ‘If
you’re not doing needles and you’re not gay, you wouldn’t get AIDS, that’s the bottom line,’” Smitherman, a married gay man, shouted. “I’d like you, Mr. Ford, to explain to people how your character, and especially these comments, is justifiable, now that you present yourself as someone who wishes to be mayor of the City of Toronto, one of the most diverse places to be found anywhere in the world.” The debate, held at the Toronto Congress Centre, was on Ford’s home turf of Etobicoke. People in the audience booed the question.

“Let me tell you what Rob Ford’s character is about,” Ford fired back. “It’s about integrity, it’s about helping kids get off the street, helping thousands of kids get out of gangs.… I have a Rob Ford football foundation.… You want to get personal, go ahead … I’m not gonna play games, like you have, blowing a billion dollars on eHealth when [you were] the health minister.”

This was Smitherman’s Achilles heel. In October 2009, Ontario’s auditor general, Jim McCarter, had released a damaging report about the provincial government’s efforts to create electronic health records. McCarter found that since 2002, one billion dollars had been spent developing a system that wasn’t being used. Not enough of the right kind of information was available, so doctors and the public still weren’t accessing it. The auditor also criticized the province’s eHealth agency for hiring pricey consultants without a competitive bidding process. The scandal was a long, messy, and complicated fiasco that spanned both Liberal and Conservative governments. But George Smitherman had been health minister for four and a half of those years, from October 2003 to June 2008, leaving him to bear the brunt of the blame. It was a liability that according to insiders caused him to have second thoughts
about running for mayor. His team was still figuring out a rebuttal to the kind of attack Ford was hurling his way that afternoon at the Toronto Congress Centre.

As soon as “eHealth” came out of Ford’s mouth, the friendly audience erupted in cheers and applause. Smitherman shook his head and it was on to the next question.

Ford had done well sidestepping the AIDS comment trap, but his handlers were irritated with themselves. They should have seen Smitherman’s attack coming and prepared a better response.

Although the narrative was taking shape, the growing pains continued through May. At dawn, a week after the debate, Kouvalis climbed out of bed at Deco and headed to the nearby convenience store for a coffee and the morning papers. To his amazement, on the front page of the
Toronto Star
’s city section, he read, “Mayoral Candidate Tells HIV-Positive Gay Man: ‘I Feel Terrible.’” Without telling anyone working on the campaign, Rob and Doug Ford had met with Dieter Doneit-Henderson, an HIV-positive married gay man who had been offended by Ford’s comments about AIDS. He had contacted the
Star
, and when the newspaper called Ford for comment, the candidate asked to meet the man. The Ford brothers went to Doneit-Henderson’s apartment in an Etobicoke high-rise with a reporter and photographer. “I apologize if I offended you or your husband in any way—that’s not my style,” Ford said. Brother Doug chimed in, “I’ve had my gay friends come and visit me in Chicago. Gay men have slept in my bed.”

Kouvalis stared at the paper in disbelief and fury. For any other politician, this was the kind of gaffe that could have repercussions for weeks. It was off-message, drew attention to
an issue they were trying to avoid, and left readers with images of Doug Ford having sex with men. Kouvalis wanted to scream. Something needed to be done.

Doug Ford was leaving for Chicago that day on business, and Kouvalis offered to drive him to the airport. They made the short trip in uncomfortable silence.

“Nick, I know, I know,” Doug said finally as they pulled up to the terminal. “The article was a mischaracterization. It was just supposed to be about how much we love the community.”

“Just stop,” Kouvalis said. “I bought you a gift.” He handed Doug an extra-large box of condoms. “In case any gay men climb into your bed while you’re in Chicago.”

Doug got the point. But that would not be the last of Dieter Doneit-Henderson.

BY JUNE, FORD’S TEAM
had learned to work with the brothers’ unconventional behaviour. The campaign had averted some minor crises and could feel some momentum. They hired a new staff member, the charismatic Adrienne Batra, to head up communications. Volunteers were pouring in. Campaign staffer Roman Gawur said, “It was very grassroots. All kinds of people were showing up wanting to work because [Rob] had helped them before.” It was starting to seem like the kinks had been smoothed out, like they were a real, functioning, normal political campaign.

It would be a fleeting moment of calm.

One morning in early June, Kouvalis was out jogging with Ford as part of a new routine. Kouvalis wanted Ford to lose weight for the sake of his health, so he was making him exercise.
It helped anchor the day, and it gave Kouvalis quality one-on-one time with the candidate. On this particular run, Ford confided that he’d been talking again to Doneit-Henderson, and that the
Star
’s City Hall bureau chief, David Rider, seemed to know about it. Rider had been the one who wrote the original story with Doneit-Henderson.

“Why would Rider give a shit?” Kouvalis asked suspiciously. Ford shrugged.

Kouvalis got worried. That day, he asked around the press gallery, tested the waters with Rider, pressed Ford some more. By the end of the day, he was able to put it together. And what he saw meant serious trouble for Rob Ford.

The campaign was now operating out of a plaza at 245 Dixon Road in Etobicoke. The office was loud, so Kouvalis liked to sit outside in his car to make calls. “Hey, Fraser, can you come see me?” Kouvalis asked the young communications staffer. When Fraser Macdonald got to the car, Kouvalis was smoking with the windows down. The music was on. This was Nick’s office.

Kouvalis looked sombre. “This is serious,” he said as Macdonald climbed into the passenger seat. Kouvalis said he believed that that HIV-positive man from the paper, Doneit-Henderson, had been phoning Rob since the interview. Kouvalis suspected they’d been discussing Doneit-Henderson’s drug use and that the man had secretly recorded one of those talks, a conversation that may have included their candidate offering to help buy Doneit-Henderson drugs. Macdonald sat wide-eyed. But there was more. It looked like the
Star
had a copy of it. “You’ve gotta get that tape. I need to hear what’s on it,” Kouvalis said. “I don’t care what you do.”

Macdonald went home and got to work. Doneit-Henderson
had a Twitter account and had alluded to the recording in his updates. He’d been boasting that he had “engh 2 destroy th entire Ford Family Legacy.” Macdonald decided to befriend him online. He knew Doneit-Henderson wasn’t going to open up to a Ford staffer, so he created a fake persona. He pulled a random photo of a woman off the internet and put a Smitherman “twibbon”—a digital campaign button you can pin to a profile photo—on it. She needed a name. He wanted it to sound quintessentially downtown. Someone who would vote for George Smitherman. “Queens Quay” popped into his head, the street that ran along the waterfront at the foot of Yonge Street, the home of the
Toronto Star
. With that, @QueensQuayKaren was born. Macdonald wrote a bio: “Downtown Toronto gal who likes politics, my cat Mittens, and a good book.” He started the account that night, June 11. It was duplicitous, yes. But politics was a blood sport and espionage was part of the game.

After posting a few tweets to attract followers and so make the account look more legitimate, Macdonald moved in on his quarry. “@DeiterDH What have you got on @robfordteam? Nothing I’d like to see more than to bring him down!”

Doneit-Henderson responded, and the two started to exchange private messages. Doneit-Henderson told “Karen” about the tape and forwarded a link to a hosting site where the audio could be downloaded.

“I got it—just starting to listen! Who else has heard this???!?” @QueensQuayKaren replied.

Most of the fifty-two-minute recording was rambling and nonsensical. And then Macdonald heard it. Sitting alone in a secluded office at Deco, he put his head in his hands. Ford—a
2010 mayoral candidate—could clearly be heard offering to help Doneit-Henderson “score” OxyContin on the street.

It’s over, he thought.

Macdonald called Kouvalis on his cell phone, then Adrienne Batra, newly hired as head of communications. She was downtown with Ford at the time. Kouvalis told him, “Talk to no one about this.” Macdonald was to wait at Deco and the other two would meet him there, away from the rest of the staff at the official campaign office. Both arrived within an hour.

The audio file indicated the tape was made on June 4. Doneit-Henderson, who suffered from fibromyalgia, had called Ford for help finding OxyContin, a time-release painkiller that when taken incorrectly can be highly addictive. On the street it’s called hillbilly heroin.

DONEIT-HENDERSON:
Can you find OxyContin for me,

Rob?

FORD:
Huh?

DONEIT-HENDERSON:
Can you find OxyContin, so I can get on the medication? …

FORD:
I’ll try, buddy, I’ll try. I don’t know this shit, but I’ll fucking try to find it.

DONEIT-HENDERSON:
How about your brother mentioned your guys’ doctor. Did you guys ever look … go into … look into that?

FORD:
He said that you’ve got to come personally.

DONEIT-HENDERSON:
Oh, well. Hey, listen, I’m ready to go. I mean, I’d even go down there now in all this pain.

FORD:
How much does OxyContin go for on the street— so I have an idea?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

FORD:
Leave this with me. Call Doug tomorrow, we’ll see if I can’t, uh, I know I won’t be able to. But I have no idea. Fuck, you know, I don’t know any drug dealers at all.