Popular candidate, unpopular party
Bortolin the pitch for beleaguered Liberal brand in Windsor West
“It’s so hard!” lamented Crystal Awrey.
She loves Rino Bortolin, who’s running in Windsor West in the provincial election June 7. She hates his party leader, Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne.
“I would love to vote for you,” she told him, “but she’s got to go.”
It was the refrain all along Dominion Boulevard in South Windsor, where Bortolin canvassed Monday.
“I do like what I see,” said another woman who didn’t want her name used. “He does talk well. He seems to know what he’s talking about.
“But I don’t like his party.” “I’m torn. I’m going to have to sit down and do some studying.”
He’s a popular candidate running for an unpopular party. It’s a tricky sell at the door. And it’s leaving many voters stumped.
It’s the classic question: Do you vote for the candidate or the party?
Bortolin is the high-profile, grassroots Ward 3 councillor known for championing downtown. He was key to major new incentives that are attracting investment to the core. He has also addressed problems that residents have complained about for years, from vacant buildings to dumping. His supporters are many and loyal.
But his party ... Wynne is the most unpopular premier in Canada with an approval rating of only 19 per cent. The Liberals have just 26.7 per cent support and are predicted to win just 14 seats, dropping to third-party status, according to Poll Tracker, an aggregate of publicly available polling data by analyst Eric Grenier for the CBC.
Meanwhile, the bad news keeps on coming. David Livingston, the chief of staff to former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty, was just sentenced to four months in jail for deleting documents on the government’s decision to cancel two controversial power plants before the 2011 election. And auditor general Bonnie Lysyk released a report last week that the Liberals are understating their projected budget deficits by billions of dollars.
What do you pitch? And how do you vote?
Bortolin is the pitch.
“Look at all the work I’ve done on council,” he says at every door.
He cites bulk garbage pickup, an issue he brought to council four times before it was passed. He cites addressing vacant buildings, an issue he spent months mobilizing residents for before bringing it to council.
“If you find someone who works harder than me, check off that box, but I guarantee you won’t,” he told one resident.
“I’ve been able to advocate strongly for residents,” he said at another door. “I can do the same at the provincial level.” He’s not distancing himself from the party, he said. The local candidate matters, he believes. That’s who brings the community’s concerns to the provincial legislature.
“The biggest asset is my work on council and the work ethic it takes to do the work,” he said. “I want to get stuff done.”
He has spent the last several days canvassing South Windsor, afternoons and evenings during the week, all day on weekends. People in his ward know him. But his ward covers only onesixth of the riding. South Windsor is far from downtown. He discovered that a lot of people in South Windsor know his name.
But then he gets grilled. “She keeps hiking hydro rates,” one woman told him, referring to Wynne.
This is the first government in 40 years that has invested in the electricity system, he replies. There were blackouts and brownouts because of insufficient capacity and smog days because of coal-fired plants. All that new infrastructure costs. But this woman didn’t buy it. “There are other reasons we’re paying,” she said. “There were screw-ups.”
The decision to cancel the two power plants was estimated to cost about $1 billion. Prices for wind and solar energy were exorbitant. Mismanagement has cost Ontario tens of billions of dollars, according to the auditor and provincial Financial Accountability Office.
We made mistakes, Bortolin admitted.
He pitches the government’s recent progressive policies, like free prescription drugs for people age 24 and under, free post-secondary tuition for low-income students and free daycare for preschoolers. “There are a lot of offsets this government has introduced, a lot of positives,” he said. Windsor decided to throw out the Liberals in the last election, he points out. The Liberals still won and Windsor was left without any government members. Then there’s this: “You have to look at the other choices. Doug Ford is promising $6 billion in cuts. It has to come from somewhere,” he said, referring to the Progressive Conservative leader. The problem for Bortolin is that most of the time it’s not about the candidate.
Faced with voting for the candidate or the party, only about 20 per cent of people vote for the candidate, said Nelson Wiseman, political science professor and director of the Canadian studies program at the University of Toronto.
“Studies show that when people are asked if they’re voting based on the candidate or the party, invariably the candidate is the least important,” said Wiseman. “It’s overwhelmingly the party. Party and leader are more important than candidate.”
Voters on Dominion promised to consider Bortolin. But, except for stalwart Liberals, there were few commitments. Bortolin guided Shawn Lippert through a zoning change he needed for his business, Scarehouse Windsor, a haunted house on McDougall Street.
“You certainly went to bat for us,” he acknowledged.
He’d re-elect Bortolin for council, he said.
“He’s a standup guy.”
But the provincial election? He hasn’t decided.
I’ve been able to advocate strongly for residents. I can do the same at the provincial level.