Ontario Liberal leader hopefuls in final push for delegates’ support

Liberal leadership hopeful Kathleen Wynneis counting kilometres and delegates.

Wynne, who is one of two front-runners, arrived in front of Queen’s Park on Friday in an election-style highway bus before setting off on a three-day tour of southwestern and eastern Ontario.

“My grassroots campaign is hitting the road to listen directly to the concerns and ideas of Liberals and Ontarians,” the Don Valley West MPP said.

With just a week left before Ontario Liberals pick a new leader, the six candidates are preparing for one final push to convince delegates that they have what it takes to put the beleaguered party and fiscally challenged province on the right course.

The delegated Liberal leadership convention is being held at Maple Leaf Gardens on Jan. 25-27.

The new leader will replace Premier Dalton McGuinty, who announced this past October that he was stepping down.

Last weekend, Sandra Pupatello garnered 27.44 per cent of elected delegates to Wynne’s 25.2 per cent, well ahead of their four rivals.

“I have to get every delegate to the convention and I have to get every delegate in everyone else’s camp to consider me as the potential for second ballot.” SANDRA PUPATELLO

Former Parkdale-High Park MP and MPP Gerard Kennedy, second to McGuinty in the 1996 Liberal leadership, has 13.99 per cent; Mississauga— Erindale MPP Harinder Takhar 13.28 per cent; Mississauga South MPP Charles Sousa 10.78 per cent; and St. Paul’s MPP Eric Hoskins 5.66 per cent.

After speaking to a sold-out Toronto Board of Trade luncheon Friday, Pupatello, a former Windsor MPP, told reporters, “We are nowhere near the end of all of this.

“I have to get every delegate to the convention and I have to get every delegate in everyone else’s camp to consider me as the potential for second ballot, and at the end of it all when I am hopefully winning this thing, I need all the delegates to want to be happy about that,” she said.

A spokesperson for Sousa said he would continue to press independent delegates and ex-officio’s to vote for him and those committed to someone else on first ballot “to vote for him on second ballot.”

Hoskins, a spokesperson said, is spending next week personally calling the more than 400 ex-officio delegates (MPPs, party officials, etc.) and the independent delegates.