Mammoliti declares that he is taking another run at mayor after losing in Wasaga Beach

Former Toronto city councillor Giorgio Mammoliti has announced that he is running for mayor.

Mammoliti took to the airwaves yesterday to trumpet himself as the one to bring dignity back to the city. Of course, those who follow city politics over the last quarter-century might be surprised to hear it put quite that way.

“We’ve lost a lot, we’ve lost our personality, I think our dignity is gone,” he said, during the interview on CP24. “Our street dignity, we’re dirty, the way people are behaving, and I think we need to take note of how government contributed to that. I want to clean it up.”

In terms of experience, yes, he has decades of it from his time as an MPP elected in 1990 and on city council when he was first elected in 1995 before he lost the 2018 election to Anthony Perruzza when the wards were amalgamated by the province.

Opinions on social media, for what they are worth, pointed to his past, shall we say, controversies and might not have the desire to revisit this period in municipal governance.

But not everyone was against the idea.

Mammoliti also ran and lost the race for mayor of Wasaga Beach in 2022 finishing a distant third.

The candidate, for those who don’t remember, is the councillor who posed for a photo flipping-off the city in an apparent stand against the popular King Street Transit Priority Corridor. Remember him?

He was also criticised for a comment left on an opponent’s Facebook page deemed “racist.”

When Mammoliti ran for mayor in 2010 some of this campaign proposals included red light district-style brothels and a floating casino in addition to cutting taxes. He withdrew his candidacy after six months.

Mammoliti is the second candidate with significant experience in municipal government following Rob Davis’s declaration last week. But still no current or recent city councillors have made it official.

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