Doug Ford’s loyal fans don’t care about his past

Wynne has tough road ahead swaying his loyalists

With time fast running out and polls showing she’s headed for a major defeat, Kathleen Wynne is desperately trying to find a way to beat Doug Ford in the June 7 Ontario election.

The embattled Ontario premier has read Hillary Clinton’s book, “What Happened,” looking for clues about what worked and didn’t work for Clinton against Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. She has also studied the televised debates between Trump and Clinton as she gets ready for a series of debates with Ford and NDP leader Andrea Horwath.

In addition, Wynne has tried to appeal to lower- and middle-income voters who might lean Ford’s way by promising everything from free tuition for many postsecondary students, expanded daycare, pharmacare, higher minimum wages and more.

And she’s test-run several differing campaign styles, at first taking the high road in her approach to Ford, but lately switching to openly tough attacks on the Tory leader.

None of it, though, is working. Simply, Wynne is flummoxed on how best to go after Ford.

Privately, senior Liberals concede one of the main reasons Ford has maintained his solid lead in the polls is that his supporters simply don’t care what he has done or said in the past.

That’s true even if it is shown that he’s a badly flawed candidate with a long, wellreported background of bullying, abusive behaviour and questionable judgment.

Indeed, this “I-don’t-care” attitude toward Ford by his loyalists is hauntingly similar to the attitude toward Donald Trump by his fans.

It was so pronounced that Trump famously declared at a rally that his supporters were so loyal they’d stick with him even if he were to shoot someone in downtown New York.

It’s the same phenomenon with Ford supporters. Here are some examples:

Ford was reported by the Globe and Mail to have been a drug dealer for a number of years in the 1980s. Ford denied the allegations, but never sued the paper for libel or challenged them in court, later suggesting a lawsuit would be “a waste of time. But Ford fans don’t care.

He accused the father of an autistic boy of waging a “jihad” and told him to “go to hell.” But Ford fans don’t care.

In 2016, Ford was found by Toronto’s integrity commissioner to have broken the city’s code of conduct when he was a councillor by improperly using his influence in municipal matters pertaining to two firms that were clients of his Deco Labels, his family-owned company. But Ford fans don’t care.

After attacking the leadership of his own party about how they ran the central party operations, Ford took the unprecedented step last weekend of appointing 11 Tory candidates, including the son of former premier Mike Harris, who had lost a nomination contest in a nearby riding, to run in the June election. But Ford fans don’t care.

He has said he wants to fire the head of Hydro One because of his big salary, even though he has no authority to do that. He’s vowed to cut $6 billion in spending, although he had no plan to do so. He’s vowed to slash Ontario’s corporate tax rate although it already is the lowest in Canada. He has yet to unveil his campaign platform. But Ford fans don’t care.

He’s called a Toronto Star reporter a “little bitch,” told a Globe and Mail reporter to get “off her lazy ass,” and called journalists “a bunch of pricks.” But Ford’s fans don’t care.

With attitudes like that, it seems Ford supporters will stay with him regardless of what happens in the official campaign period. If that happens, defeat is certain for Wynne.