Les activistes accèdent au pouvoir : le travail difficile commence

As activist-turned-leaders like Rob Ford, Olivia Chow and Zohran Mamdani discover the moral clarity that wins elections often collides with the slow, compromising grind of governing.

When Olivia Chow became mayor of Toronto in 2023, her victory was hailed as a turning point. After years of centrist rule and municipal austerity, Toronto voters chose a lifelong activist who promised to build a “more caring, affordable, and safe” city. Her election, following John Tory’s resignation, felt like a moral renewal proof that empathy and grassroots politics could triumph over managerial caution.

Yet Toronto has been here before, though from a very different direction. A decade and a half earlier, Rob Ford’s right-wing populism swept City Hall with the same force of conviction and outsider energy that now animates the current progressive movements. Ford’s rallying cry of “respect for taxpayers” channelled suburban frustration with perceived downtown elites, translating resentment into an insurgent mandate. His success showed that populism in Toronto was not the preserve of the left but a style of politics emotionally direct, anti-establishment, and rooted in moral clarity that could upend the city’s political order.

Now only two years later, the optimism that swept Chow into office has faded. According to a Leger survey reported by the National Post on November 6, 2025, Torontonians are now evenly split on her performance: 43 percent approve, 43 percent disapprove. But the number of residents who strongly disapprove has tripled since the summer, rising to 27 percent three times the share who strongly approve. The poll captures a familiar trajectory for activist leaders: the steep descent from idealism to the grind of governing.

From moral clarity to political constraint

Chow’s challenge is not simply about popularity; it’s about transformation turning movements into administrations. Activists rise through conviction and confrontation. They win elections by making voters believe politics can again serve principle. But bureaucracy runs on negotiation and arithmetic, not slogans.

Chow came into office promising to tackle Toronto’s housing and affordability crises head-on. She pledged to curb “renovictions,” freeze rent hikes, and expand affordable housing on city land. Yet she inherited a $1.8-billion deficit, limited taxing power, and deep dependency on Queen’s Park and Ottawa.

Her moral urgency soon met institutional inertia. The same voters who admired her compassion now want visible progress more homes, safer streets, measurable change. The polling reflects that shift: many still believe in her goals but no longer see results they can feel. Affordability has become not an aspiration, but the metric by which she’s judged.

The short honeymoon of progressive governance

Ford’s tenure offers a cautionary mirror. His populism thrived on moral clarity the idea that government had lost touch with “real people.” Yet once elected, the simplicity of that message collided with the complexity of budgets, unions, and service delivery. The same dynamic now confronts Chow from the opposite ideological flank. Both leaders one appealing to taxpayers, the other to tenants translated frustration into power, only to discover that governance blunts conviction.

Chow’s early months were buoyed by younger voters, renters, and workers who felt unseen by previous administrations. But municipal politics is shaped by older, more established homeowners whose priorities tilt toward taxes and order. The National Post survey revealed a generational divide: younger Torontonians remain mildly supportive, while those over 55 have turned sharply against her.

Younger voters feel housing insecurity and see in Chow’s leadership overdue empathy. Older voters, more insulated, tend to view the same urgency as instability. The result is a coalition energized by those with the least electoral power and constrained by those with the most. In a city where turnout skews older, that imbalance is perilous.

The burden of symbolism

Chow’s identity as an activist gives her authenticity but also heightens scrutiny. What reads as moral language to one audience registers as reckless diplomacy to another. For activists, clarity of conscience is a virtue; for mayors, it can be a liability. Once in office, every statement becomes a policy signal. The rhetoric that electrified rallies can backfire under the glare of institutional responsibility.

From Toronto to New York: A shared test of power

Chow’s predicament now echoes south of the border in New York, where Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and community organizer, was elected mayor in 2025. His campaign promised transformative policies, free buses, universal childcare, a city more equitable than ever.

Yet within days of his victory, reality intervened. As Politico reported, Governor Kathy Hochul lauded Mamdani’s energy while rejecting his plan to eliminate bus fares and questioning the feasibility of his childcare proposal. Her congratulations came with guardrails: enthusiasm for his vision, but reminders of budget math and jurisdictional limits. Mamdani, like Chow and earlier Ford, is discovering that the system they sought to challenge now requires their management. In all three cases, movement energy collides with structural power.

The activist’s paradox

For leaders forged in activism, power is a paradox. The same moral clarity that propels them to victory can undermine their capacity to govern. Government requires restraint, trade-offs, and incrementalism.

Chow’s declining approval is not a repudiation of her ideals but a reflection of governance’s tempo. She entered office as a symbol of compassion; she now operates as a steward of fiscal order. To her supporters, that looks like retreat. To survive politically, it’s necessity.

The Canadian precedents are telling. Ontario’s Bob Rae, lifted by labour enthusiasm in 1990, was forced into austerity. Alberta’s Rachel Notley tried to reconcile climate ambition with an oil economy and pleased no one. Toronto’s David Miller, elected in 2003 on social justice promises, left office worn down by deficits and labour strife. Ford, for his part, learned that anti-establishment anger is easy to mobilize but hard to translate into stable governance. In each case, movements became governments and governments became constrained.

The generational divide in patience

The Leger data suggest a deeper cultural fault line: a divide in political patience. Younger Torontonians, renters and gig workers, see housing and cost-of-living as emergencies requiring immediate response. Older residents, homeowners with relative stability, view the same crises through a slower lens.

For the young, urgency defines justice; for the old, urgency looks like risk. Chow governs a city where those two temporalities clash daily. Activists campaign in moments; mayors must govern in years.

The hardest transition in politics

The hardest shift in politics is psychological: moving from moral urgency to institutional endurance. Chow’s next test is whether she can balance principle with pragmatism turning empathy into policy that endures scrutiny. For Mamdani, the challenge is the same: converting slogans into budgets. Both must learn that moral victories mean little without operational ones.

Lessons for a new generation of leaders

Their experiences highlight the lessons every activist-leader must absorb:

• Compassion must be coupled with competence. Vision without execution erodes trust.
• Delivery defines credibility. Voters forgive compromise, not paralysis.
• Coalitions are essential. Governing requires allies beyond the movement’s base.
• Language must evolve. The tone of protest inspires; the tone of governance sustains.

The rhythm of movements is fast and emotional. The rhythm of government is slow and procedural. The art of leadership is synchronizing the two without losing momentum or meaning.

Beyond the honeymoon

For Olivia Chow, the coming year will determine whether her mayoralty matures into effective governance or dissolves into disappointment. The Leger–National Post numbers are not a verdict but a warning: ideals alone cannot carry an administration indefinitely. The rhetoric of belief is still there “a city is a promise we make to one another” but it’s now anchored by a ledger of delivery: an upgraded AA+ credit rating and a “taxpayers’ break” announced at a November 10 Canadian Club luncheon that next year’s budget will be framed as no cuts, no big spikes, and no higher taxes. In campaign terms, Chow is recasting empathy as competence.

For Zohran Mamdani, Toronto offers a preview of what lies ahead. The moral clarity that won him City Hall will soon be tested by fiscal ceilings, political rivals, and the realities of bureaucracy.

Both leaders and before them, Rob Ford, stand at the frontier of a recurring experiment: whether populist conviction, from the left or right, can survive contact with power. Their success will depend not on how loudly they can demand change, but on how deftly they can deliver it. Beyond the honeymoon, Chow is wagering that competence can be a progressive verb, that a caring city can also be an executing one. The next year will tell whether that wager pays off at the ballot box and the ballot question may just be that the promises didn’t fade rather they grew up.

At the heart of the matter is that activists believe conviction changes systems; governments survive on compromise. When activists win power, the chants fade, the spreadsheets appear, and the work of transformation begins quietly, imperfectly, and, if they are lucky, enduringly.