Doug Ford and Pierre Poilievre are very different Conservative cats, but they have one thing in common this spring.
Both are running classic front-runner campaigns: maintain tight control at all times; minimize risks; avoid unscripted appearances; take advantage of friendly media to keep opponents fighting among themselves, and use social media to play up their spats; never find time for press conferences; evade scrums lest some dodgy reporter raise an awkward issue not anticipated in the campaigner’s cheat sheet.
The front-runner strategy is not new. Pierre Trudeau employed an early version of it. Perfected by Stephen Harper’s campaign managers, the strategy served him well, until it backfired in the election of 2015. It failed for his successors Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, who, lacking Harper’s discipline, were too insecure to lock it in. So far, it is working quite nicely for Ontario Premier Ford, seeking his second term, and for Poilievre, the crypto-quack populist who is running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, or what may remain of it when the leadership war is over.
With the Ontario election just 17 days off, let’s concentrate on Ford.
The party that he leads calls itself “Progressive Conservative.” The label is meaningless; these days, the party is neither progressive nor particularly conservative. Simply put, it is what it needs to be to ensure that the Liberals and New Democrats keep splitting the opposition vote (roughly 60 per cent of the total) evenly enough to prevent either from becoming a serious threat.
It means Ford doesn’t have pry supporters away from the other parties. Until Ontario Liberals and New Democrats stop playing into Ford’s hands, until they recognize that the only realistic chance of toppling his government is by joining forces, the premier doesn’t have to worry about either of them. He doesn’t have to offer goodies to bribe their voters. He is free to shore up his own soft spots by taking care of his friends and reassuring waverers that he alone has their interests at heart.
Judging by the polls, the front-runner strategy is working as intended. When the Ontario campaign began officially on March 4, the Liberals seemed to be closing in on the Progressive Conservatives. But the new Liberal leader, Steven Del Duca, appears out of his depth at times and his campaign lacks focus and direction. The Liberals have been bleeding momentum.
Three vote consolidators, CBC’s “Ontario Vote Tracker,” Toronto Star’s “The Signal” and 338 Canada’s “Ontario Simulator,” put the PCs from 8.5 to 9.7 percentage points in the lead. And with 63 seats required for a majority in the 124-seat legislature, the three outfits are projecting a second Ford majority government, with between 72 and 75 seats.
The premier could come acropper in the final leader’s debate tonight, but that seems unlikely. He will be allowed to bring his binder of crib notes. He knows his fate will not rest on defending the government’s record. What he needs to do is to reassure the 36 or 37 per cent of Ontarians who are already disposed to re-elect him that he has done as well as any ordinary fellow could be expected to do in the teeth of a pandemic and other exceptional challenges.
That’s Ford great strength – his ability to present himself as an ordinary guy who does his best, a servant of the public interest who in this campaign is simply seeking the understanding and indulgence of ordinary Ontario voters.
It’s an act, of course. There’s nothing ordinary about Ford and there is nothing in his four years in office that clamours for his re-election.
He will win on June 2 because Ontarians – enough of us anyway – accept him as an ordinary person doing a tough job that precious few of us, his fellow ordinary Ontarians, would want to undertake.
Ford wins, we win. Because he is us.