DOUG FORD TAKES PC PARTY LEADERSHIP IN ONTARIO.
The newly crowned leader of Ontario’s beleaguered Opposition was meeting on Sunday with his main rival, who, as of press dealine, had refused to concede.
Doug Ford met with Christine Elliott the day after she narrowly lost the Progressive Conservative leadership to him, a spokeswoman for the latter said, though she would not confirm what the two were discussing.
Elliott disputed Saturday’s results, alleging they stemmed from “serious irregularities’’ in the vote and pledging to investigate further.
But Ford brushed off her allegations on Sunday, saying he was working on restoring unity within the party as it fights to topple Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government in the June election.
“I’m worried about Kathleen Wynne not Christine right now,’’ Ford told reporters as he walked in a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Toronto.
“We’re going to defeat Kathleen Wynne and bring prosperity back to this great province ... we’re uniting the team and we’re going to defeat Kathleen Wynne.’’
Elliott has said she won the popular vote and the majority of ridings, and said thousands of party members were assigned to incorrect ridings during the voting process.
“I will stand up for these members and plan to investigate the extent of this discrepancy,’’ she said in a statement issued hours after Ford’s victory was declared.
The party said, however, that Ford’s win was definitive. It noted that there had been an issue with the allocation of certain electoral votes but the matter was reviewed and resolved.
“These results are definitive and provide a clear mandate to Doug Ford as outlined in our party constitution and the leadership election rules,’’ Hartley Lefton, chair of the party’s leadership election organizing committee, said Sunday.
Uniting the party and making it appeal to a range of voters may prove a daunting task for Ford given his brash, often confrontational approach, which he displayed in his brief career in municipal politics and again in his leadership campaign, said Myer Siemiatycki, a political science professor at Toronto’s Ryerson University.
“One doesn’t exactly think of the Ford political brand involving bridge-building, reaching out to those who disagree with them to forge compromise or common ground,’’ he said.
“The leadership style is very alpha and alpha male, and it remains to be seen how that will go over,’’ he said, noting there is no reason to expect anything different now that Ford is at the helm.