'Desperate': The race for second place revs up
Plus: Fresh dirt
ABOVE THE FOLD
It’s just over a week out from E-Day and the straggler campaigns are making a Hail Mary pass in the hopes of taking the frontrunner PCs down a notch.
Welcome to the progressive primary.
The morning after Monday’s big debate, BONNIE CROMBIE and MARIT STILES appealed to each other’s supporters and pitched themselves as the credible alternative to DOUG FORD, the incumbent who’s been sitting pretty in the polls since day one.
Like 2022, the race for second place is heating up — and, also like in the last round, Ford could benefit from so-called strategic voting on the progressive side, as Crombie and Stiles fish from the same pool of voters.
Vibe shift: While public-opinion polls suggest they may not be able to topple the PCs, the Liberals and NDP are looking to woo enough swing voters to capture the anti-Ford vote and become Official Opposition.
Indeed: Crombie and Stiles traded barbs with each other as much as Ford in Monday’s debate. But they’re still hoping to lure the other’s supporters anyway.
“We see the race narrowing between the premier and myself,” the Liberal leader said at Clifford Brewing Co. in Hamilton, typically NDP territory. “That’s why I’m reaching out today to NDP voters and I’m asking them, if you want to change our health care system, please vote for Ontario’s Liberals.”
To which Stiles replied: “They’re just trying to make party status” — something that requires 12 seats and that the Grits have not been able to do since before 2018.
Stiles, who targeted Liberal voters at her campaign launch, maintained that she’s focused on “flipping blue seats to orange.” That might also speak to Stiles’s performance in the debate, which was measured at best and boring* at worst — she says she’s playing for Premier and contends that Crombie, who went fisticuffs with Ford, is running a bid for Oppo leader.
Indeed, the NDP has been zeroing in on areas like Windsor-Essex and the North, where they lost ground to the PCs in 2022. They also want to target close races and hang on to their seats in Toronto and its fringes, where Stiles announced her local platform and rallied the party faithful on Tuesday. The PCs, meanwhile, have been gunning for orange seats, especially Windsor West, as well as in the London and Niagara regions.
“Desperate” is the word both NDP and Liberal operatives used to describe the other’s strategy for the final stretch of the campaign.
Liberal insiders are also quick to tell me they know they’re doing something right when they’re getting attacked by both the PCs and NDP.
NDPers say the same about their own opponents — noting the PCs also sicced on New Democrats after the debate, calling them “radical” on social media.
So, where does Ford fall in all of this? The PC leader has been playing it safe and laying low, and that’s been working for him (much to the chagrin of the reporters he’s been dodging). But on Tuesday he cancelled a presser in Sault Ste. Marie due to delays at Pearson. That allowed his rivals to dominate the post-debate headlines.
But Ford — who has commanded the news cycle since day one (with the exception of debate night, when Crombie captured Ontarians’ attention) — has a chance to bring the conversation back to tariffs as he heads to Washington for the second time during the campaign this week. That coincides with advance polls.
T-minus 8 days until E-Day.
*As TVO’s Steve Paikin might note, boring worked for Bill Davis.