Premier prize eludes NDP’s Horwath in Ontario

HAMILTON — For a few short weeks, Andrea Horwath appeared tantalizingly close to the Ontario premier’s office — a prize that proved elusive once again on Thursday for the veteran politician who has led the provincial New Democrats for almost a decade.

Despite failing to win the government, Horwath’s position is likely safe, experts said.

She handily won her own seat and boosted her party’s overall count significantly from the 18 seats at dissolution to 41 at latest count, good enough for official opposition status and rare heights for New Democrats in Ontario.

It was a mid-campaign surge in the polls, as the Progressive Conservatives under Doug Ford and incumbent Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne struggled, that thrust Horwath, 55, into an unusual space for a New Democrat leader.

Pundits said the NDP leader had tapped into the prevailing mood with a mostly sure-footed folksy pitch.

“Andrea Horwath projected a credible change agenda,” Myer Siemiatycki, a political-science professor at Ryerson University, said Thursday. “(She) capitalized well on the disapproval many Ontarians felt toward both (her rivals).”

However, Horwath’s campaign also played into Ford’s hands. He insisted an NDP government would inevitably mean reckless spending and higher taxes.

Voters appeared to agree, buying instead into Ford’s promises to cut taxes and rein in government spending by finding billions in unspecified waste — something Horwath failed to effectively counter.