The other day, we mentioned that every candidate for the liberal party in the coming provincial election in Ontario needs to demonstrate leadership. It is not that the party does not have a leader but most voters do not know him. Which is awkward in an election that is really about leadership.
The point is that Doug Ford has failed Ontario. His populist style during the pandemic has been a disaster. We spent a great deal of our time in the past two years trying to make sense of Ontario’s on-again, off-again regulations to try to contain the pandemic. And here we were trying to go along with his regulations and neither he nor his cabinet believed in them. They often ignored their own rules.
Ford and his cronies are desperately trying to improve their falling vote as the election gets closer. The election advertising this early is starting to annoy people who realize that the ads are paid for by the province. There is one running endlessly on the television networks that shows a province that that is so glamourized that people are wondering what province it is advertising.
The conservatives are puzzling over whether they have to campaign hardest against the new democrats or the liberals. At the moment, they probably consider the NDP the main target. The problem with that is that nobody considers Andrea Horwath an effective leader. And since most people do not know liberal Steven Del Duca, his leadership ability is unknown.
And that puts the heavy lifting on the liberal candidates across Ontario. It means that instead of taking the lazy route and just running what party headquarters in Toronto tells them, the candidates have to be aggressive and creative. They have to sell themselves to the voters in their electoral district. They have to be aware of and promoting solutions to what concerns their voters the most. They have to get elected the old-fashioned way and convince the voters that they can best represent them at Queen’s Park.
And if liberal leader Steven Del Duca gets around to any smart ideas for Ontario voters, that will just be a plus. It is still up to the individual candidate to win in their riding.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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