Ford Nation still strong even after two years of pandemic politics
If the handling of the COVID19 pandemic is the No. 1 issue in the Ontario election, then voters don’t seem to be socially distancing from Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford — yet.
Ford and the PCS entered the election with a sizeable lead in the polls, although recent polling suggests the race may already be tightening .
But Andrew Enns, who’s overseeing election polling for Leger, said Ford is in pretty good shape. “When I look at the voters and I see Premier Ford sitting in a pretty good position, I’m not sure the voters want to dwell on the past record,” Enns said.
“I don’t see a great appetite for that. There’s still a pretty sizeable portion of the population that thinks (the Conservatives) did the best they could.”
Ontario’s Conservatives entered the 2018 election still reeling from an internecine leadership struggle that nearly tore the party apart. Doug Ford was still relatively unknown outside Toronto, where he served on city council, developing a reputation as a score-settling pitbull alongside his famous (or infamous) kid brother Rob.
Four years later, few politicians in the country have as high a profile as Ford. In the early stages of the pandemic, at least, Ford appeared on TV almost daily to give voters his folksy COVID-19 update, often alongside his leadership rival Christine Elliott, deputy premier and minister of health.
There were many missteps: the pandemic exposed the appalling conditions in many of Ontario’s long-term care and retirement homes; the province’s vaccine rollout was chaotic; and an underfunded health care system was strained to the breaking point.
In 2020, Ford famously encouraged people to travel on their March Break holidays, just days before declaring a state of emergency and shutting down schools. After issuing a stay-at-home order, Ford skipped off for a holiday at his Muskoka cottage.
But compared to fellow conservative premiers like Alberta’s Jason Kenney and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe, Ford seemed a moderate, if inconsistent, voice.
“If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have thought this election would be a referendum on Doug Ford and Doug Ford’s leadership,” said Jonathan Mallow, a political scientist at Carleton University. “But it doesn’t seem to be about that. Doug Ford seems to have grown into the premiership. A lot of people have opinions about him, but there doesn’t seem to be that really sharp division that we had, for example, with Steven Harper or even Justin Trudeau. . .”