PC rank-and-file told their wise ones where to go
Until Saturday, the biggest gong in the world was more than five metres across. According to Guinness. Made of copper, weighing more than 550 kilograms.It was displayed at the Third China Taiyuan International Cooked Wheaten Food Festival in Shanxi in 2005.
The Shanxi gong is now second-class. The title has passed to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, which blew up its own announcement of its new leader — Doug Ford — in a voting fiasco only to reveal him in the middle of the night at a hotel in Markham, after the election organizers were booed off a ballroom stage by party loyalists they’d had to send home because the rental on the room had expired.
“There’s a review underway of an allocation for a certain list of electors that needs to be resolved,” the poor volunteer chairman of the Tories’ leadership organizing committee told loyalists who’d paid to be there for the announcement. We don’t know how long it’s going to take, he said. We’ll tell you who the new leader is “as soon as practically possible.”
That turned out to be about four hours later. When the votes were allocated to the correct ridings in the Tories’ pointsbased election system and for the second leadership campaign in a row, the Progressive Conservative rank-and-file told their wise ones to go to hell.
Christine Elliott was the most experienced candidate. The former deputy leader and nine-year MPP had the most depth, the most professional team, the most institutional knowledge. She racked up the most supporters in caucus and among nominated candidates.
She fell short, for a third time. This party likes her but it doesn’t want her to lead it.
Ford was an insurgent. He had just two MPPs backing him — Toby Barrett and Raymond Cho, not heavyweights — and three nominated candidates. Much like Patrick Brown, he comes to the leadership with practically no scaffolding holding him up. Doug Ford’s primary asset is Doug Ford.
He says dumb things. He says false things. He attacked a group home for autistic kids when he was a Toronto city councillor, on grounds that included that when it was being planned, nobody told him the kids would be going outside and people would have to see them. He’s sure he can cut billions in waste from the provincial budget, without causing anybody any pain, with talent nobody else in provincial politics possesses.
In Ottawa, this play starred Larry O’Brien. In Toronto, Rob Ford. In the United States, Donald Trump. They’re all happy hyperbolists, so ignorant of what they don’t know that they can patter nonsense with total conviction.
Christine Elliott had the most depth, the most professional team, the most institutional knowledge … She fell short, for a third time.
The first two were one-termers; Trump is on pace to be. But they all won.
Ford can win. He’s a high-risk, potentially high-reward candidate for the Tories. They’re starting with a lead over the Liberals and New Democrats, and Ford could be such a disaster he tanks it (we’ve now seen O’Brien, Rob Ford and Trump in action) or he could lead them to a crushing majority.
“I know that many of the party members feel like they’ve been let down by this process,” Ford said. “Tonight is a clear sign that there is a lot of work ahead of us. We have a lot of work to do before the next campaign. We have a lot to do in a very short time.”
There are plenty of angry voters to appeal to, and Ford’s simple stop-the-gravy-train populism does it.
Kathleen Wynne’s team believes in her and she’s a gifted campaigner, who has barely been out in the last six weeks. She’s running from way behind but don’t count her out. Nor Andrea Horwath — her populism and Ford’s are flip sides of the same coin, and it’s wholly possible that Ford could weaken Wynne enough that voters buy the populist message but trust Horwath’s version more.
The trouble is that Ford’s first job is to unite a party that is inherently fractious, a loose coalition of Bay Street business types, social conservatives and rural populists. A group that almost picked Christine Elliott, almost the political opposite of Ford, to be its leader.
Again, Elliott was the most popular among the party’s current officeholders. Again, the rank and file sent them a leader they don’t want.
Interim leader Vic Fedeli, hours earlier, before the stagemanaged announcement went awry, had pleaded for that unity.
“While some have been focusing on what we’ll call inside baseball, our team at Queen’s Park and our candidates on the ground have remained focused on holding Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals accountable,” Fedeli told the then-happy crowd.
That “inside baseball” includes, for instance, that three out of four candidates (including the winner!) didn’t even want the new leader announced on Saturday because they didn’t think the party’s voting system had worked well enough.
That’s not quite the same as accusing the party of throwing the race to Elliott but it’s awfully close. Well, OK, Ford did that, calling the decision a scandal perpetrated by party elites. Whom he now leads.
“Our work does not end today. Because whatever differences, as Progressive Conservatives, our differences are small compared to everything that unites us,” Fedeli said. “The real campaign, the real test, still lies ahead of us. ... Victory is not going to fall to us. We are going to have to earn it.”
Do not let small differences, which are inevitable in a leadership campaign, distract us, Fedeli said, and immediately repeated it for emphasis.
“Stay together. Stay united. Stay strong. Uniting is not something that simply happens to us. Uniting is something we do,” he said.
Jason Kenney, the former federal minister and now leader of Alberta’s provincial conservatives, fired up the crowd by reminding Ontario Tories what they, and conservatives across the country, agree on: They hate and distrust Wynne, they scorn Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (“Prime Minister Dressup,” Kenney called him, and threw in a joke about Trudeau’s gender-neutral language), and they will do anything to fight a carbon tax.
“We need you. All Canadians need you to turn this province around,” Kenney told them.
Ford can win but he’s off to a very difficult start.
The thing about a really big gong is that the sound builds. Vibrations pass through the metal and reflect from the edges in persistent waves that grow, fade, and strengthen again. The first clash of the mallet reverberates endlessly.
I just had to endure a very tenseand turbulent eight weeks, and before that things weren’t always the best, either ... I see today as a new dawn.
MPP LISA MACLEOD (NEPEAN-CARLETON), just minutes before meeting with Ford on Sunday in Toronto
Congratulations to Doug (Ford) on being elected Leader of the Ontario PC Party. United we will defeat Kathleen Wynne. June 7th will usher a better future.
MPP JOHN YAKABUSKI (RENFREW-NIPISSING-PEMBROKE), co-chair of Caroline Mulroney campaign, via Twitter
I’m very optimistic and positive. This was not a race; this was a contest. Thereareno losers in this race. The membership has spoken.
MPP RANDY HILLIER (LANARK-FRONTENAC-LENNOX AND ADDINGTON), Christine Elliott supporter, from home Sunday evening