Photo Courtesy / Josh Ungar

So much for being too close to call.  After all the showmanship and dirty politics, apparently people didn’t take the message to “vote anybody but Ford” very seriously.

In a surprisingly lopsided victory, Rob Ford was declared the new mayor of Toronto mere minutes after the polls closed on election night, cementing his brash campaign and proving voters wanted change and transparency.

“Toronto is open for business again,” beamed Ford as news of his early victory broke. “The party with taxpayers money is over ladies and gentlemen.”

At the Toronto Congress Centre, where Rob Ford held his election party, the celebration was only getting started for his overjoyed supporters. As news of the victory broke early, his faithful crowd went wild with dancing, cheering and ceremonial flag-waving as if Ford was their saviour.

“This is a surreal feeling, Rob Ford is a tremendous guy,” said Paige MacPherson, social-media co-ordinator for Ford.

“He really deserves it and I’m so happy for him.  This is an election about change.  Toronto spoke and they want change.”

Well here we go Toronto, without question change is coming, and it’s in the form of a loud, in-your-face right-wing mayor unlike the city has seen in years.

He may not be as polished and well-spoken as George Smitherman or have as long and illustrious a career as Joe Pantalone, but you gotta give it to the guy, he isn’t scared to step on a few toes and has managed to gather an almost fanatical following while doing it.

“Tonight the people of Toronto are not divided. Tonight we are united,” Ford bellowed before his captivated audience of supporters.

While the city may have united to elect Ford, many of his campaign promises, including scrapping Transit City, may do just the opposite.

So much for UTSC being directly connected to the other side of the city, it looks like we’ll have to stick with his plan for more subway stations.

Along with his plans to change transit, Ford promised more police officers and tax cuts, as well as a reduction in the number of city councillors and their budgets – taking aim at a few recent lavish councillor expenditures.

“There won’t be any more $12,000 retirement parties,” Ford joked at the expense of Coun. Kyle Rae, who recently spent that amount on his party.

While Ford plans to cut costs in the city, unfortunately for UTSC students, they’ll have to wait until the next provincial election before they hear promises of tuition cuts, a key student concern.

As he was being rushed from scrum-to-scrum, Ford paused for only a second to address The Underground and his Scarborough voters, giving a vague and clouded response.

“They’re great, we’re going to treat everybody the same … guaranteed we’re going to get it all cleaned up,” Ford remarked.

He finished off his election speech by thanking all his voters and promising to work hard enough to please even those who didn’t vote for him.

Finally, he left the stage promising voters that four years from now they will look back at this night and say, “Rob Ford did everything he promised he would.”

We can only wait and see whether or not that’s actually a good thing.

(Photo gallery courtesy of Khush Bhandari / Josh Ungar)