Doug Ford vs. Olivia Chow: How will Ontario's premier and Toronto's new mayor get on?

After winning Toronto's mayoral byelection, Olivia Chow now faces what could be a far tougher challenge: winning support for her agenda from Premier Doug Ford. 

The premier made it patently clear during the campaign that he did not want Toronto's next mayor to be Chow, who spent 14 years as a left-leaning city councillor and eight years as a New Democrat MP. 

"If Olivia Chow gets in, it'll be an unmitigated disaster," Ford said just last week. "Businesses are going to be fleeing Toronto. Businesses are terrified. Therefore, the workers should be terrified."

Earlier in the campaign, Ford said Toronto would be "toast" if what he called a "lefty mayor" got elected. Then, after saying he would stay out of the race, Ford pointedly endorsed Mark Saunders, who finished a distant third with just eight per cent of the vote. 

Ford's harsh words about Chow — and his predilection for stepping into Toronto municipal politics — might appear to set the stage for a combative relationship between Queen's Park and Toronto city hall over the next three years. 

But insiders connected to both Ford's government and Chow's campaign say they believe the conservative premier and the progressive mayor can move past the rhetoric of the campaign and actually work well together. 

Observers say the key for both will be to find areas where their political interests align and line up with the best interests of the people of Toronto. Both the mayor-elect and the premier say they'll be able to do just that

"I'm sure we can find some common ground," Chow told CBC News Network on Tuesday. "At the end of the day, politics is what's possible. How do we do it together?" 

Ford's tone toward Chow has already become far more conciliatory than it was in the campaign. 

"During the election, you throw some mud back and forth," Ford said Tuesday at an unrelated news conference. "People expect us to work together and that's exactly what we're going to do," he said. "We're going to find common ground when we sit down, cause she's actually quite a nice person." 

There's plenty of precedent for political adversaries putting mud-slinging behind them and working things out once a campaign is over. 

Political parties, for instance, always need to heal in the wake of bitterly contested leadership races. Ford himself has forged a solid working relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, despite the federal Liberal leader slamming him at every opportunity in the 2019 federal election, when Ontario's premier was deeply unpopular. 

Chow's victory speech signalled that she wants to work with Ford rather than be his opposition, said Zach Taylor, associate professor of political science at Western University. 

"They both know that they need to work together to address the issues that face the city, and that there's political benefits to the two of them working together," said Taylor in an interview.