‘They don’t want us to win,’ fumes Ford

In his daily encounters with journalists during Ontario’s election campaign, Doug Ford seems eager to avoid confrontation — a contrast to the angry outbursts he directed at the press when late brother Rob was mayor of Toronto. But in a series of recent email blasts to party members, there’s been a different message, one that accuses the news media and polling companies of conspiring to try to stop Ford’s Progressive Conservatives from capturing Thursday’s election. “The media, the pollsters, they don’t want us to win,” said one blast a week ago. “So they ’re making up numbers to write stories about NDP momentum.” Another email said the media are “angry because I speak directly to the people.” It’s unclear if the messages reflect a sincere distrust of news outlets and pollsters, or are a way to get rank-and-file Tories out to vote and to donate in a tight race — or both. Melissa Lantsman, a PC campaign spokeswoman, said she would not comment about the emails, or “generally on campaign strategy.” They are reminiscent, though, of similar tirades by Donald Trump before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election — and messaging disseminated by the federal Conservatives to members under Stephen Harper. “The kind of paranoid stance that ‘They’re out to get us’ has generally served the Conservatives pretty well in the last decade,” said Christopher Waddell, a journalism professor at Carleton University. “They think their political advantage is to getting and keeping their supporters mad.” Most political news reporters are professional and balanced, said Brett James, partner in the Sussex Strategy Group. But there is a lessgenerous perception of the press among some political activists, which is likely what the emails are about, he said. “There is certainly a narrative and feeling out there that there is media bias, and I think this taps into that in order to motivate voters,” said the longtime Conservative consultant. As for polling news, Waddell said the media could actually do a better job of explaining the relative reliability of the torrent of polls released on the race — and their differing methodologies. The Conservatives had long enjoyed a healthy lead in the polls, only to see it vanish by mid-May. The PCs and NDP are virtually deadlocked in the most recent polls. Ford has a fraught relationship with the media dating back to his time at Toronto city hall. It continued during his run for the Conservative leadership earlier this year, with Ford declaring at one point “the media isn’t going to give us a fair shake.” But there has been little of that since he became leader, though his media scrums have been kept short and controlled. Then on May 25, an email to members lambasted a poll report giving the NDP a significant lead, before asking for a donation. “The pollsters and the media are ganging up to try to keep us down,” said the message from doug@ontariopc.com. “They are scared of what happens when the people get a voice.”