David Miller will lead any party we will him to

BY ROB SALERNO – Well, you can’t blame me for trying.

The Toronto Star carried a story today, Aug 9, about former Toronto mayor David Miller’s appearance at the Siemens Green Cities Challenge forum, where he was given a warm welcome but “vowed to stay out of politics,” according to the headline.

However, in the story, Miller is quoted as saying only that he’s enjoying private life, that he doesn’t want to run for leader of the federal NDP, and will not run for Jack Layton’s Toronto-Danforth seat. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll “stay out of politics,” as there are plenty of other jobs Miller could take if he’s interested.

So, after I read the article, I asked David Miller over Twitter if he would consider running for the Liberal Party of Canada, to which he responded:

Which, as I pointed out, does not say “no.”

From there, local theatre artist Michael Murphy took it to the logical conclusion.

That generated a few retweets and some seriously confused questions, so I decided to call Miller’s office at Aird and Berlis to confirm whether Miller’s emoticon should be interpreted as a coy sign of interest in the top Liberal job, or if he was just pulling our legs by being vague.

I didn’t get through to Miller, but when I told his secretary what I was calling to ask about, she laughed out loud. Repeatedly. Miller would not be seeking the Liberal Party leadership, she assured me.

So I went back to the Twitter to let the disappointed masses know that the Liberal Party leadership is still wide open. Of course, that wasn’t the end of it.

But that just seemed like even more of a challenge to other members of Toronto’s Twitterati.

@GraphicMatt reported that he was hearing rumours that Miller would be running for the Social Credit Party.

Grid editor @TheKeenanWire reported variously that Miller would be seeking the Republican presidential nomination, joining the cast of Two and a Half Men, and applying for the job of “sandwich expert” at the Junction’s Subway location. He also created the hashtag #MillerMania to keep track of our erstwhile mayor, but since that hashtag is already in use by Dutch trance musician Jochen Miller (Twitter bio: “Taking the World in a fashionable way”), I concluded that Ed Keenan had also heard our Miller was competing on Netherlands Idols.

And @JoshuaHind reported that Miller would be seeking to replace McDonaldland’s Mayor McCheese while also running for the leadership of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois, but ruling out a merger.

Okay, so it’s a Friday afternoon and we’re feeling kind of silly, but with the mess that is currently going on at city hall — and is only going to get worse with today’s announcement that Pride funding is once again on the chopping block, along with grants to all of Toronto’s major cultural institutions — you can see why we’re feeling a bit wistful for the administration we had a year ago.

One last bit of David-Miller-related Twitter humour: consider following Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader @TimHudak. Whenever he tweets about his three-year-old daughter Miller, I like to imagine he’s talking about our former mayor: