Everyone ready for a game of Liberal musical chairs?

As you’ve probably heard, George Smitherman has left the provincial government to make a run for Mayor of Toronto. The general consensus has that race as a clash between Smitherman and John Tory – I expect my vote will go to Smitherman, but Leaf fans love a perennial loser, so maybe Tory will be able to pull it off.

Regardless, Smitherman’s departure opens up Toronto Centre and, no mater how bad things may be going for Dalton McGuinty, that’s about as safe as seats come. One of the candidates for the prize Liberal nomination will be former Winnipeg Mayor Glen Murray, who would add some star power to a Liberal caucus which has lost some big names over the past year. I was at a well-attended Murray campaign event last night – also there was Smitherman who is endorsing Murray.

It appears Sachin Aggarwal won’tbe going for the Toronto Centre nom, but the federal Liberals will be losing some talent, in the form of Rocco Rossi, who has helped dramatically boost party fundraising numbers this year. Yesterday, Rocco announced he would be tossing his hat into the Toronto mayoralty race. The interesting twist here is that Rossi was Tory’s campaign manager when Tory came close to defeating David Miller back in 2003. It’s hard to say how Rossi will fare – at the very least he should out-tweet the other candidates in the race.