Can Scheer shake Ford’s baggage?

Ontario premier’s unpopularity is rubbing off on federal Conservative leader

When the late Republican leader John McCain ran for U.S. president (and lost) against Barack Obama in 2008, he spent much of the campaign, like any politician, telling people who he was.

But he also told them who he wasn’t.

“I’m not George Bush,” he said in a speech, referring of course to the sitting president of the day, George W. Bush, a man who would one day eulogize McCain at his own funeral, but whom McCain sought to distance himself from at the time.

(It may be hard to picture now, but there was an era when Bush was better known for waging war than he was for sneaking Michelle Obama candies.)

After McCain lost the 2008 election, Republican strategist John Feehery told Reuters the failed candidate’s mistake was that he “did not break from Bush early on and he should have.”

Fast-forward 11 years, and a similar dynamic is playing out here at home, in Canada, where one powerful conservative leader will most likely have to “break” away from another if he wants to win the highest job in the land.

Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is running for prime minister of Canada but he is also, in a sense, running away from the brand of Ontario Premier Doug Ford — a brand better known than his own and, at present, a brand that is very unpopular.

According to a poll released by Corbett Communications this month, 60 per cent of Ontario voters reported that they are less likely to vote for Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives in the upcoming federal election because of the policies of the provincial Conservatives under Doug Ford.

“This represents an increase from last month,” the report reads, “when fewer agreed Ford’s policies were an impediment to a vote for Scheer’s Conservatives.” (Last month that number was 54 per cent.)

Also in Corbett’s findings from last month: 21 per cent of “past Conservative voters” said they were less likely to vote for Scheer in October on account of Ford’s policies.

It doesn’t seem to matter to these voters that Scheer is a different person than Ford, a different person who will, if he wins, rule at a different level of government and with a different agenda (presumably one less concerned with cheap beer).

For these voters, even Conservative ones, the sting of Ford’s provincial cuts is fresh and, it seems, inextricably linked to the Conservative party at large.

Scheer may be confident that he is his “own” man (as he’s expressed in the press before), but if he wants to be the next prime minister of Canada it might do him better to tell Ontarians loud and clear that he is “not Doug Ford.”

The question is: Will anyone believe him?

After all, in response to a reporter’s question last year about Ford’s growing presence on the national stage, Scheer pushed a message of party unity rather than promote his own personal brand.

He said that he and Ford were on the same page on multiple issues, including, for example, opposing the carbon tax and lowering costs for Canadians.

“I was just in Nova Scotia at the provincial PC leadership there. I’ll be here in Ontario for the PC leadership (convention),” Scheer told reporters last year.

“There’s great co-operation between provincial and federal parties when we have interests and common ground. That’s something that’s happened in the past. That’s something I’m excited about.”

Who wants to bet his excitement has waned? And that he’s eating those words right about now?

Meanwhile, Ford is among the people as they eat burgers and flapjacks.

The Ford government may be on an extra long break from the Ontario legislature until after the federal election, but the premier isn’t exactly lying low. He’s all over the news, getting booed at the Raptors parade, hitting the barbecue with his base at Ford Fest and flipping pancakes at the Calgary Stampede.

To people who follow politics casually — who aren’t well versed on the division of powers, who don’t know, for example, that increasing class sizes in Ontario is not in Andrew Scheer’s wheelhouse — the differences between a provincial leader and a federal one are not so obvious. Ford may be a fixture of Ontario. But he has a hulking national presence and an unforgettable brand.

John McCain couldn’t shake George W. Bush. It’s hard to believe Andrew Scheer, though he may try, will shake Doug Ford.