Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford remains a longshot for the city's top job with just six per cent support in polls, but his social-media-heavy campaign has kept the current city councillor firmly in the discussion — often to his own detriment.

Bradford has been a target on social media even since before making his campaign for mayor official, mercilessly trolled over a stop at a Scarborough patty shop that marked the unofficial start of his mayoral bid. Since then, it's been more of the same, including a song produced mocking Bradford over his basement-dwelling best friend.

And the politician has once again drawn the ire of the Twitterverse over his latest weekend campaign moves.

In a video shared to social media on Saturday, Bradford doubled down on his bid to preserve the Gardiner Expressway in its entirety while driving in the highway's shadow along Lake Shore Boulevard on Saturday.

Bradford's tweet was met with lukewarm support, garnering a dozen retweets and just over 100 likes as of Monday morning.

Most of the attention, however, came from a quote tweet posted in response a little over an hour later, where another driver who claims to have witnessed the events alleges that Bradford was driving slower than the speed of surrounding traffic, forcing several cars to overtake him as he railed on about how Olivia Chow's leadership would "make gridlock worse."

Lol I was the car in front of Brad who, while making this video about traffic and congestion caused more traffic and congestion by driving well below the moving speed of the roadway. ~6 cars overtook/drove around him while he shot this cinematic masterpiece 🫠 https://t.co/GjsW5yhJK7

— Deepak Iyer (@deepakmiyer) May 27, 2023

The quote tweet from tech lawyer Deepak Iyer goes on to say that Bradford, "after making this video, got out of the traffic lane into an empty lane, turned right onto a well moving Lower Sherbourne and went on his way. I get what you're trying to say/do here but this behaviour is disingenuous."

Iyer's response has far outshined its source material with over 10 times the number of retweets and over seven times the total likes as Bradford's video.

On Monday, Bradford proudly tweeted about the video's rising view count, seemingly unaware that the majority of views were actually coming from quote tweets ridiculing the video.

But Bradford's campaign team argues against Iyer's claim. Jamie Ellerton, Bradford’s communications director, questioned the validity of the accusation in a rather tense phone call with blogTO, asking, "okay, so you're just taking some random tweet and turning it into a story?"

A later, much more civil statement from a member of the Bradford team, defends the video, saying, "If you click on the video in Brad's tweet and watch it in full, you'll see a red car pulls up on the left (the driver's side view mirror) and then merges behind Brad as traffic crawls."

"It's all too common when stuck in gridlock for different lanes of traffic to move at different times."

Others are taking issue with another campaign stop made by Bradford on Saturday, where he was spotted drinking a beer and eating — wait for it — a beef patty during an outdoor campaign meeting.

The City of Toronto has better things to do than wasting time and money hassling people for enjoying a beer in the park.

Do you agree with me? 🍻 pic.twitter.com/S0wda0kquG

— Brad Bradford✌️ (@BradMBradford) May 27, 2023

A handful of commenters raised questions about the timing of these two videos, a point Bradford's campaign team has been quick to respond to with clarifications.

"After a good drink in a park, I like to go for a drive." #topoli https://t.co/L3a3oom9Rf pic.twitter.com/rsElyWgMvd

— Michael Bednarski 🇨🇦🇺🇦 (@mikebednarski) May 27, 2023

Amid questions from social media commenters about the timeline of the two tweets, Bradford's team confirmed to blogTO that the driving tweet was filmed several hours after the park tweet, and underscored that their candidate "knows how to consume responsibly."

"Brad responsibly enjoyed a drink in the park with his campaign team about 5 hours prior to being filmed stuck in the gridlock on Lakeshore," reads a statement from Bradford's campaign team.