Play up Ford Nation, not the party
Here’s how Ford Nation wins o over a province.
By word and song. And (campaign) signs of the times.
At a Doug Ford rally, the leader is always late, leaving extra time for his populist a anthem to penetrate your being. A throbbing earworm that burrows deep inside your consciousness.
“Bring us hope, bring us change,” the theme song exhorts.
The crowd is warmed up to overheating as the anthem choruses, c “For the people! Hey!”
The lyrics loop over and over: “For the people! Hey!”
Ford himself is now in the hall, making his way through Ford Nation. OPP bodyguards deploy in the cavernous airport conference centre as the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives poses for smiling selfies with adoring supporters before taking the microphone.
“My friends, people across Ontario are coming together,” Ford proclaims in his deliber- a ate delivery, a man in com- mand of his audience — his friends.
“My friends, people are looking for change,” he continues. “We will form a government that’s for the people, not for the insiders, not for the elites.”
Ford fires up the crowd with stirring rhetoric about hydro rip-offs, a promise to rip up Ontario’s sex-education curriculum, a pledge to axe any carbon tax and a vow to cut taxes for the people.
For Ford Nation, the words are music to the ear. Not to mention that earworm.
Amid the mesmerizing mes- saging, however, there are clues that this is not a traditional Progressive Conservative campaign rally. Listen closely, and look at the telltale signs, for this is emphatically a Doug Ford election event.
“It’s bigger than one party,” tthe leader stresses, repeating tthe phrase for emphasis. “This is about the people.”
The people, not the party. Another clue comes from the signage at the podium, which makes no mention of the Tories.
Instead, a blue, red and white sign at the lectern says it all — all that needs to be said — in big bold letters: “Doug Ford for the people.”
There is nary a PC placard to be found, no true-blue Tories in their official colours. The old Progressive Conservative Party, whose leadership Ford captured in an upset victory last March, has been subsumed and consumed by Ford Nation.
The Tories have been rebranded into the people’s party, which is to say Ford Nation’s party. Every public opinion poll suggests it is now Ford’s province, too.
And at this event, early in the campaign, the leader exults wwith Trump-like hyperbole o over “the thousands of people here tonight.” Except there are not thousands of people ( journalists count several hundred in the cavernous venue near Pearson airport).
That’s not to say Ford can’t draw a crowd — never mind that his campaign famously hired professional actors to cheer for him outside a televi- sion studio. Tonight’s audience is diverse, made up of young and old, white, brown and Black, men and women, many drawn from the suburban belt of the GTA that Ford is counting on.
More than a friendly crowd, it is rapturous. But beyond preaching to the converted, can he convince a broader coalition of voters that he deserves to be premier on June 7?
In the campaign’s early days, Ford seemed content to coast to victory with his Conservative core. With a strong grip on most of rural Ontario, the Tories have a huge head start o over the Liberals (largely con- fined to the urban and suburban areas), and the New Democrats (vying with the Tories for support in the southwest and north).
Many party loyalists — not just Red Tories — may be uncomfortable with Ford’s disruptive approach. But his campaign is betting on an infusion of new blood from the Ford Nation coalition to ex- ceed any attrition. If he can wrest blue-collar votes with his populist appeal in NDP turf, and make gains in Ford Nation pockets in Etobicoke, Scarborough and the 905, he has a winning hand.
Which is why Ford is playing uup Ford Nation across the province, while downplaying the PC party he leads. Internal polling shows him ahead of the brand, so he is personalizing his pitch.
With little talk of policy, personality wins the day — or more precisely, the Ford persona inherited from his late brother Rob (who he tried, but failed, to succeed as mayor four yyears ago). But beyond the safe space of a friendly Ford Nation campaign rally, there have been brief glimpses of a different Doug Ford in the campaign’s early days — scripted, plodding, error-prone, dismissive of his rivals in debates, cranky with reporters who ask pesky questions. As the campaign unfolds, more people may catch sight of Ford’s unscripted, untrammelled musings — such as his nativist opposition last week to new immigrant workers in the north, where an audience of mayors and reeves groaned aand laughed at his ignorance of t their need for more foreigners amid declining populations. Or his private boasting of bulldozing the Greenbelt, until word got out and he backpedalled furiously.
For the moment, Ford looks formidable. The Progressive Conservatives have gone all in wwith Ford Nation, on the premise that Doug Ford is more popular than the party — because he is for the people.
If the people are behind him on June 7, the party will win big with a majority government landslide. But if the people tire of him, or turn against him, the party whose brand he banished will reap the whirl- wind.