Horwath and the NDP are fending off attacks from both sides
Will probably soon see if team is ready for ‘prime time’: prof
First, she found herself in Doug Ford’s firing line. Now, Andrea Horwath increasingly finds herself the target of Liberals attacks, too.
As the third-place party in the legislature finds itself consistently running a solid second in polls, the NDP leader is fending off both the leading Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals in the run-up to the June 7 election.
“It’s no doubt a sign of shifting polls and a recognition that the contest is shaping up differently in different parts of the province,” said Sean Speer of the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance.
“Northern Ontario is a good example — there are various parts of the region where the
PCs’ main opponent may be the NDP rather than the Liberals,” said Speer, who is director of the Ontario 360 Project, a website that looks at provincial election issues in detail.
“The NDP is going to face more scrutiny than it usually does, including its policies and its candidates. This is a real test. How realistic is its agenda? Have its candidates said non-mainstream things online and elsewhere?
“The next week may well determine if Andrea Horwath and her team are ready for prime time.”
On Friday at the leaders’ Northern debate in Parry Sound, the PCs accused a Kingston-area NDP candidate of being an antimining activist and radical environmentalist. Horwath told the audience that Ramsay Hart is now a food-bank executive.
Ford continued his attacks on Saturday, saying the party is no better than the Liberals who have governed for 15 years.
“It’s clear the NDP have taken a page from Kathleen Wynne,” Ford said at a retirement home in Etobicoke Centre, a riding the Progressive Conservatives hope to wrest from the Liberals.
“They’ve taken a page from her playbook making promises they can’t keep, promising more of your money to try and win the election.”
The Liberals too — facing voters who appear to be keen on change at Queen’s Park — have turned their sights on the NDP. Those attacks came after a good week for the NDP, and after a high-profile boost — what Horwath called a “historic endorsement” from the 81,000-member Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.
Though Wynne downplayed it, in education circles it was seen as a clear slap to the Liberals, who have enjoyed widespread support from teacher and support staff unions for decades.
Following the debate, Horwath headed further north to Sudbury, for several campaign events in a riding the NDP has high hopes for.
Both the NDP and Progressive Conservatives feel they can knock off Liberal incumbent Glenn Thibeault, a former federal NDPer who was minister of energy in Wynne’s Liberal government. The parties see him as vulnerable over hydro bill outrage and an election bribery scandal that landed in the Sudbury courts — though the judge quickly found the two accused not guilty.
The NDP candidate is Jamie West, a community organizer who is president of the Sudbury and District Labour Council.
The PCs are running former NHLer Troy Crowder, a local who played for the New Jersey Devils and Los Angeles Kings during his hockey career.
Horwath, on the way back from her two-day tour — where she also hit Orillia and Barrie on the drive to Toronto — she said she was “thrilled” to see so many people out at the campaign stops.
“For me, it’s trying to get the sense of where people are at … I’m excited. I’m excited about how positively people are accepting or embracing our platform.”