Will his pandemic response earn him a Queen’s Park encore?

Straighten your act out, and you have an opportunity.

It’s an expression Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford has said he used to hear from his father when he and his three siblings were growing up in Etobicoke.

It’s also one that has new relevance today as he prepares to make the case to Ontario that he deserves re-election as premier after a fouryear term that played out in two acts: how he governed pre-pandemic and how he governed during.

Elements of Ford on display over the last two years — a man who personally delivered masks to a hospital, who helped shovel out strangers during a snow storm and who stands shoulder to shoulder with a Liberal prime minister he once personally disparaged, in order to deliver billions in spending to the province — is the candidate his party hopes voters will back.

Ford, as his campaign slogan says, just wants to get it done.

But a challenge for him this campaign is whether what he’s done so far is enough to earn voters’ confidence a second time around.

Ford entered provincial political life after four roller coaster years as a Toronto city councillor, all served at the side of his colourful and controversial brother, the late mayor Rob Ford.

The brothers were schooled in the art of politics at the knee of their father, Doug Ford Sr., a businessman who handed control over his successful label company to Doug and his other brother Randy when he became a Progressive Conservative MPP himself in 1995.

The groundwork for what would become the political juggernaut known as Ford Nation was laid when brother Rob was elected to city council in 2000.

Doug Ford joined his brother at city hall in 2010, winning his former council seat when Rob won the mayoral race. He ran for mayor in 2014 when Rob dropped out of the race following a cancer diagnosis, but was defeated by John Tory — a former leader of the Ontario Provincial Conservatives.

Rob Ford died of cancer in 2016.

“Not a day goes by where I don’t wish I could talk to him again,” Ford wrote on social media this spring on the anniversary of Rob’s death. Politics for him has remained a family affair. Ford launched his 2018 campaign for leadership of the Progressive Conservative party from his mother Diane’s basement, introduced by his nephew Michael and with three of his four daughters by his side.

He has been married to his wife, Karla, for more than 30 years.

Ford seized the opportunity to run for leadership after Patrick Brown was forced out as the PC leader over sexual misconduct allegations, which Brown continues to deny, just months before a provincial election.

He promised to clean up the party and Ontario government, a populist message that drew immediate comparison to Donald Trump, who had shocked the political establishment just two years earlier when he pivoted from celebrity businessman to U.S. president on similar themes.

Ford has dismissed comparisons to Trump and has been critical of the former president’s attacks on Canada, but he has similarly been no stranger to controversy; this winter, he was criticized for going snowmobiling at his cottage in Muskoka while anti-government protests overwhelmed parts of Ontario.

“I take calls till one o’clock in the morning. I get calls before six o’clock in the morning and I will not stop until we get this taken care of,” he said at the time.

Being a non-stop worker was an attribute Rob Ford had admired about his brother.

“(Doug) is 10 times smarter than anyone I’ve ever met,” Rob said in a 2013 radio interview, predicting Doug would one day be premier despite the brothers’ rocky tenure at city hall.

Not only did Doug Ford’s ascension to the premier’s office come to pass, but his election victory in 2018 saw the once mighty provincial Liberals reduced to just seven seats in the Ontario legislature.

But a degree of buyer’s remorse appeared to set in among voters quickly as the controversies piled up.

He picked fights in his own backyard, slashing the size of Toronto city council in the midst of a municipal election campaign, and taking the federal government to court over carbon pricing.

He proposed spending cuts on everything from Children’s Aid Societies to environmental programs, and spurred provincewide protests over changes to autism programming.

He was accused of political interference when a Ford family friend was appointed commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police.

After a few months in office, some MPPs began complaining of a “culture of fear” being created by the staff around him; one of those MPPs, Randy Hillier, was later ejected from the PC caucus.

In June of 2019, he was booed by a massive crowd celebrating the Raptors’ historic NBA championship, while Toronto Mayor John Tory and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were cheered.

In that year’s federal election campaign, his brand was toxic; Conservatives kept their distance while Trudeau’s Liberals gleefully weaponized his record as evidence of why people shouldn’t vote for the Tories.

Dan Mader worked on Ford’s first provincial campaign but is not involved in this one. He says Ford’s first two years in office were informed by the theme of the 2018 campaign: voters in Ontario wanted a change and he was delivering on that promise.

But at the same time, he was doing it with no experience in actually running a provincial government.

“He had to learn it, and he had to learn it quickly,” Mader says, including everything from the party discipline and caucus management to mastering the massive organization that is a provincial government.

As a self-styled “numbers guy,” whose direct relationship with voters was a point of pride — he still gives out his personal cellphone number — watching his poll numbers tank hit home.

At one point, more than 60 per cent of those surveyed by Abacus held him in low esteem.

By the end of 2019, Ford reversed dozens of planned spending and program cuts, shuffled his cabinet and staff, and reset his relationship with the federal Liberals.

He told reporters in November 2019 he had no hard feelings toward Trudeau for vilifying him during the federal campaign.

“When I had a conversation with him, I told him that the politics are done and let’s roll up our sleeves and start working together and he agreed,” he said.

It was an attitude he would return to as the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic began to hit Canada in the spring of 2020.

Although Ford told people to go ahead and

enjoy spring break at the pandemic’s outset, by 2021 he was presiding over some of the most stringent public health restrictions in the country.

When a proposal to close playgrounds and get police to stop people on the street was met with public outrage, Ford nearly came to tears as he reversed course and apologized, saying he knew how hard the pandemic had been on businesses and families.

“I understand your frustration,” he said. “This experience, this pandemic, it’s something that has affected every single person.”

Insiders say the pandemic offered Ford an opportunity to play to two strengths: the political skill that works best for him — his ability to empathize and connect with people — and a business mind that favours being able to take a problem-solving approach to leadership.

For example, in the wild-west days of the search for personal protective gear, he just “dusted off” his black book of medical equipment suppliers and started making calls to find gear, driving his own truck to pick up and deliver donated masks.

“This is who he is and who he wants to be,” says Mader.

“He found the governing style that suits him best.”

Not all of his decisions over the course of the pandemic were met with unanimous support internally or publicly, nor are they now.

With a sixth wave of COVID-19 continuing to sweep across the province, Ford has been criticized for decisions to scale back access to goldstandard PCR testing, and to drop mask mandates and capacity restrictions.

Some see political motivations in the decision, given the exhaustion many have with COVID -19 restrictions and their knock-on economic implications, and how that could all play out at the polls.

His supporters point out, however, that he’s also taken political positions that were unpopular with conservatives — mandating vaccinations for his caucus members, for instance, and kicking MPP Roman Baber out of the PC caucus for opposing lockdowns.

“He is driven more by instinct than by ideology,” Mader says.

That instinct is behind his now close ties to the federal Liberals.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland once referred to Ford as her “therapist” and Ford has stood shoulder to shoulder with Trudeau for numerous major announcements in recent months, including a $1-billion announcement Monday for automakers to build electric vehicles.

“I don’t care about the political stripes. The people expect this to get done and we’re getting it done,” Ford said.

“The people will decide on June 2.” Being able to shift course is how Ford entered the pandemic with the worst approval rating of any premier in the country and begins his campaign bid enjoying broad support, says David Coletto, chief executive officer of Abacus Data.

The most recent Abacus survey suggests 61 per cent rate Ford’s performance as excellent, good or acceptable.

“With experience, and perhaps realizing how poorly they were received in the first version of him, he’s adapted and evolved to become a much more appealing leader,” Coletto said.

Having straightened his act, he now has that opportunity — to get elected for a second term as premier as a different Ford than voters chose four years ago.