Liberal leadership a forward-facing race
Unlike Iowa’s Democrats, Ontario’s Liberals have made a clear choice:
Steven Del Duca it shall be. Based on initial delegate selection tallies over the weekend, he now has a seemingly insurmountable advantage in the leadership race culminating with next month’s convention.
Not for Del Duca the muddled delegate counts that plagued the closely watched Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa earlier this month, pitting Bernie Sanders against Pete Buttigieg in a dead heat. No, he has run away with the race with roughly 54 per cent of committed delegates so far — with even more likely to rally to his side as the first ballot vote approaches.
But even if Del Duca can’t be caught, he’ll need all the traction he can get going forward. Luckily (or unluckily) for him, he can’t take the party any further backward than where it is today.
Unlike a Sanders or a Buttigieg, Del Duca is a virtual unknown. His greatest advantage is that he has a slightly higher profile than his lesser-known rivals in the race to date.
Like him, Michael Coteau and Mitzie Hunter were cabinet ministers in the last Liberal government, which went down to defeat in mid-2018. Unlike Del Duca, who lost his seat, Coteau and Hunter were among the seven solitary survivors of the election rout who clung to theirs.
But that in-house advantage counted for little outside the legislature of 124 MPPs, where Liberals were seeking not merely survival, but revival. Based on his track record, and his network, Del Duca’s path to victory took him furthest.
Other front-runners have faltered in past leadership races, victims of overconfidence or a paucity of energy. Del Duca suffered from neither those plagues, perhaps the most relentlessly determined and disciplined candidate to pursue a party leadership since, well, Patrick Brown conquered the demoralized Progressive Conservatives in 2015.
Like Brown, Del Duca does not exactly exude charisma. But he understands how to build a political machine (centred on his campaign guru Tom Allison, who also ran Kathleen Wynne’s winning effort in the party’s last leadership race).
Party members clearly wanted reassurance that their next leader could dig the party out of its hole — raising money and reaching out to voters who have abandoned the Liberals. Del Duca’s rivals have been playing catch-up from the start.
Coteau, a former minister of children’s services, perhaps came closest, finishing with the second-largest number of delegates on the weekend. He ran a spirited campaign that emphasized his own narrative arc as an inner-city kid who reached university and ran for elected politics, where he can be an inspirational speaker.
Hunter, a former education minister, emerged more humbled after having tumbled to fourth place in the race for delegates.
The sting is that she was beaten out for third by newcomer Kate Graham, a failed candidate in the 2018 election (who finished third in her London-area riding). Two other long-shot candidates, Alvin Tedjo and Brenda Hollingsworth, were far behind the pack.
Now, notwithstanding his head start on a March 7 coronation, the hard part is just beginning for what may soon be dubbed Del Duca’s Liberals. The preordained pathway to the leadership is harder than it looks.
There are still two major debates left, one in Toronto and another on TVO, that will put everyone on the spot: Del Duca can’t merely coast to victory, lest he look smug; his rivals will be reluctant to come on too strong for fear of seeming pointlessly pugilistic against the presumed victor.
Motivating Liberals — and attracting spectators — will be that much harder with Del Duca’s first-ballot victory all but a foregone conclusion. The challenge from all campaigns will still be to get their delegates to attend the convention in the GTA, given that the party is more than $6 million in debt, and many of the leadership campaigns are in the red after struggling with fundraising.
Even if he gets something of a pass from his Liberal rivals, the front-runner will almost certainly be looking over his shoulder at his more ferocious opponents among Ontario’s governing Progressive Conservatives. Not to mention the New Democrats who are keen to supplant and suppress the Liberals after overtaking them in the last election, becoming the Official Opposition after Doug Ford’s Tories won government.
Today, the NDP is trailing in third place as the Liberal brand shows resilience in Ontario. Ford is proving to be an especially unpopular premier, according to public opinion polls that show his own party’s support sagging.
It is the leaderless Liberals who continue to lead in the latest opinion surveys, which might be a mixed blessing for Del Duca: the less they see of a Liberal leader, the less they dislike him or her.
The greater risk is that as Del Duca becomes better known — or better framed by the rival Tories and New Democrats when they launch the inevitable attacks — people will have second thoughts about their first impressions. That’s what the federal Conservatives did to new Liberal leaders arriving in Ottawa, and it’s what the provincial Tories are preparing to do to Del Duca.