Wynne’s desperate survival strategy
Believe it or not, Kathleen Wynne thinks she and her Ontario Liberals still have a fighting chance to win re-election in 2018.
While it’s hard to imagine how the unpopular premier can turn around her party’s sinking fortunes over the next 18 months, Wynne and her campaign team are convinced they finally have a plan that can result in the Liberals forming at least a minority government.
It’s a desperate survival strategy that could save Wynne’s job and give some hope to Liberals who are resigned to losing the next election.
That hope is slim, though, because Wynne’s personal popularity keeps falling and now stands at 14 per cent according to one poll, making her the least popular premier in the country.
But Wynne’s strategists believe conditions are right for her to navigate a very narrow path to victory. Those conditions include a slowly improving economy, the public’s relative lack of knowledge about Conservative Leader Patrick Brown and the huge increase in the number of electoral ridings in the Toronto area. The plan is simple: First, admit that mistakes have been made and that the government will refocus its attention on issues that really matter to voters, especially jobs, hydro rates and taxes. Voters got their first glimpse of the plan last weekend when a misty-eyed Wynne apologized for screwing up on hydro rates by letting them jump so sharply and “for not paying close enough attention to some of the daily stresses in Ontarians’ lives.”
The big test, though, is whether Wynne actually corrects her admitted “mistake” on hydro prices. An apology without serious action is useless.
Second, paint Brown as a political lightweight who can’t be trusted to control his party when it comes to protecting such social issues as gay rights, legalized abortion and a modernized sex-education curriculum. As first reported by the Star’s Robert Benzie, Liberal campaign chief David Herle has conducted polling that found the vast majority of Ontarians were less likely to vote for Brown if they knew he voted as a Tory federal MP to repeal same-sex marriage, wanted to reopen the abortion debate while an MP and had flipflopped on many issues, including the sex-education curriculum, since becoming Ontario Tory leader.
Third, focus campaign money and manpower on retaining as many of Toronto- and Ottawa-area ridings they now hold as they can. Both vote-rich regions will see an increase in ridings by 2018 as the Legislature grows to 124 seats from the current 109 seats.
Fourth, champion the Liberals as the party that has worked to build and upgrade roads, public transit and subways with its massive $160-billion infrastructure program.
Fifth, learn a lesson from Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid and avoid portraying Wynne as a credible change agent and instead focus on her being a steady leader with a long-range plan to balance the budget and improve economic conditions for middle-class working families. Nearly twothirds of Ontarians say they’re eager for change, but after 15 years of Liberal rule by election day it’s unlikely they will see Wynne as the most likely to deliver it.
At the same time as Wynne is retooling her strategy, both the Conservatives and New Democrats are well advanced in their election planning.
The Tories plan to portray the Liberals as a scandal-ridden party that’s out of touch with middle-income voters. Possibly the smartest political move Brown has made since becoming leader was to march in the Toronto Pride Parade last summer. That decision sent a message to voters that Brown is trying to change the party’s current image as a social-conservative backwater.
For the NDP, they believe New Democrats who voted strategically for Wynne in the 2014 election because they feared former Tory leader Tim Hudak so much will return to the party in 2018.
Remarkably, this is the fourth time in the last 10 months that Wynne has tried to launch a political reset.
The first time came in February after the Liberals were trounced in the Whitby-Oshawa byelection. The second was in June when Wynne shuffled her cabinet. The third occurred in September when she prorogued the Legislature and tabled a new throne speech promising a minor break on hydro bills.
None of these has worked — and there’s no assurance this latest effort will either. But Wynne is a fighter and has come from behind in past elections. If everything breaks right for her, 2018 might just be another one of those times.