TORONTO - John Tory is heading into election day having raised $2.48 million from more than 5,000 donors.
Tory’s campaign released his donor list on Saturday — a few hours after rival Olivia Chow called him out for failing to make the list public on Friday.
The list includes several high-profile names from politics, business and sports including former Ontario Premier David Peterson, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum and grocery magnate W. Galen Weston.
But the list, like Chow’s list, doesn’t reveal how much money each person donated.
Chow’s campaign released its donor list on Wednesday and revealed that they’ve raised more than $1.7 million so far from 6,848 donors.
“We raised the money we needed to finance the campaign and we’ll probably have a surplus,” Tory said on Saturday — any surplus would go to the City of Toronto.
Mayoral candidate Doug Ford — who had yet to release his donor list by 5 p.m. on Saturday — said his list will come out but won’t compare to Tory’s list of donors.
“Mine’s not going to be as large as his by any means. But, we’ll release that. I have no problem whatsoever,” he said. “He raised $2.4 million. I probably raised a few hundred thousand.”
He went on to suggest Tory’s donors will be “waiting for the favours to be handed out.”
“He has $2.4-million. That’s a lot of favours, in my opinion,” Ford said.
Tory dismissed Ford’s comments.
“I think that is among the more ridiculous of his assertions,” Tory said. “I am a person that has prided myself on being able to have people see that I’m a person of integrity and would just never even contemplate that sort of thing. I mean it is crazy.
“We went out and raised the money and I’m very gratified at the success we had raising money including from lots of people who gave very small amounts. We had people come into our office with $10 in cash to give us.”
Chow’s campaign shrugged off the release of Tory’s donor list.
“Mr. Tory was forced into this by Olivia and the media and waited until the 11th hour to be transparent,” said Chow campaign spokesman Jamey Heath. “We prefer being the campaign with more donors because it shows broad support among average people.”
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