TORONTO — Ontario Conservative Leader
John Tory and the New Democrats’ Howard Hampton made last-gasp efforts yesterday
to derail another Dalton McGuinty Liberal majority.
Mr. Hampton was out campaigning hard against Mr. McGuinty, blaming the
Liberals for the loss of thousands of jobs last year in the province’s
manufacturing sector.
And Mr. Tory was talking in upbeat tones despite polls that suggest the
Liberals are on the road to an easy victory - and that he may even lose in his
own riding of Don Valley West.
“Many people are saying they are ‘powerfully motivated’ to change the
government,” Mr. Tory said. “So they will be out to vote on Wednesday and a lot
of people will be joining them and we will do just fine.”
Mr. McGuinty quickly denounced the message as being too negative. “It’s never the kind of ad I would approve,” he told reporters yesterday.
But Mr. Tory said the only way he can describe the record of the McGuinty government is in negative terms.
“When we have autistic children who have not received aid
and we have people who are paying tax who are among the poorest in Ontario, when
we have people without a doctor who are elderly and can’t get help, then
anything you say about it is bound to sound negative,” he said.
But, even if the ad catches the attention of voters, the question for both
Conservatives and New Democrats is whether there is enough time to turn the tide
on a McGuinty majority. Late last week, one poll suggested the Liberals had an
11-point lead.
Peter Woolstencroft, a political science professor at the University of
Waterloo, said there have been elections that saw major changes in voter support
in the final two or three days, and sometimes a well-executed advertising
campaign has been the deciding factor.
“But I don’t think we have this here,” Dr. Woostencroft said. “The people who are going to vote have already made up their minds.”
Others, however, were not ready to hand the majority to Mr. McGuinty just yet.
“Given the circumstances, I think the message in their current TV spots is
the best bet,” said Greg Lyle, the managing director of the Innovative Research
Group, a public-opinion research and strategy firm.
“However,” he said, “for it to work, the Tories need to narrow the Liberal
lead to about five points. That would need a movement of voters equal to the
biggest week of the last federal campaign - possible but not easy.”
Despite the size of the task, one senior Tory said the response at the
doorstops this weekend suggests people are thinking twice about the casting
their ballot for the Liberals.
“Even though they might be comfortable with another Liberal win, a bunch of
them are saying that McGuinty needs to be punished a bit and sending him a
majority is the wrong message,” he said.
“It might make things interesting after all. I definitely get the sense that our worst days are over and that we probably are making gains.”
And John Capobianco, who worked as an adviser for the former Ontario
Conservative government of Mike Harris, said campaigning this weekend has
convinced him that people are more receptive to Mr. Tory than they were a week
ago.
As for the New Democrats, Mr. Hampton hinted Saturday he may re-evaluate his
role after the election. After every election, he told Global TV, “you sit down
and think about it. I’m not making any promises either way.”
Henry Jacek, a political science professor at McMaster University in
Hamilton, said a win for the New Democrats would be to increase their seat count
in the Ontario Legislature from 10 to 15.
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Globe
ONTARIO VOTES: NEARING THE FINISH LINE: PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS
The final grades are in
Each day of the campaign, Globe and Mail editorial board member Adam
Radwanski has been grading the party leaders at globeandmail.com. As voters
prepare to head to the polls on Wednesday, he offers an overall take on how each
one stacks up
There are few things I will claim over John Tory. He’s had a much more
accomplished career than me. He was commissioner of the Canadian Football
League; I just turn up at the games. He’s running a provincial party; I’m
writing a daily report on how he’s doing. But if nothing else, let the record
show that I’m quicker at judging when something is too ambitious to work.
It took Mr. Tory three-quarters of the campaign to realize that he was not
going to be able to convince Ontarians of the merits of his religious schools
plan. By contrast, it took me about half an hour to realize that I was not going
to be able to incorporate every single aspect of the campaign into a daily
report card.
My initial thinking was that the leaders would each be graded on a variety of
factors. Who was running the best-staged events? Whose war room was responding
quickest to opponents’ attacks? Who was controlling the agenda? Which side was
proving the most Internet-savvy, using online media to reach out to younger
voters?
There were two problems with this approach. First, without being on each
campaign bus all the time, it was impossible to track every movement by every
leader - let alone what his staff was up to. More importantly, I wouldn’t have
been able to see the forest for the trees. Tracking all that minutiae would have
meant that the report card bore little relation to how the election was actually
being decided.
So to understand who’s winning or losing the battles, that’s what you have to
keep your eye on - the things you’d look at if watching the campaign wasn’t part
of your job description. And then you have to ask yourself three key
questions.
First, what message was each leader trying to get across that day to voters?
Second, did he succeed in getting that message across? And third, was it the
right message in the first place?
The reason Mr. McGuinty scored the best day-to-day, and has the highest
overall mark looking back, is that for the most part voters saw what he wanted
them to see. Owing both to self-discipline and to his campaign’s careful staging
of each event, he very rarely got thrown off message. That message - we’ve done
a lot of good things, especially on education, and John Tory will mess them up -
was exceedingly boring. But it was the right one under the circumstances,
because the province had little will for major change, and stability is Mr.
McGuinty’s best selling point. Mr. Tory, by contrast, spent most of the campaign
unable to control the message. The Progressive Conservative
Leader spent his days trying to get Ontarians talking about the Liberals’
health-care tax or their disdain for the parents of autistic children, but
coverage of him focused almost exclusively on religious schools. As that issue
swallowed him alive, nothing he did - interviews, public events, TV and radio
ads - was enough to change the topic.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton fared slightly better than Mr. Tory, in that the
coverage of him generally focused on whatever issue he was trying to get across
that day. But in his case, the problem was that it wasn’t the right message.
With an unimaginative campaign, he wound up being marginalized - the one thing
he absolutely needed to avoid.
To be clear, each leader was judged solely on whether he achieved his own
goals, not in relative proportion to the other two. Otherwise, Mr. Hampton -
whose party was sure to receive the lowest number of seats - would have been
guaranteed the lowest grade. And however ambitious his belief that he would be
able to make popular an unpopular policy, it was Mr. Tory who surely deserved
that distinction.
B+
DALTON MCGUINTY
Post-mortems on this race will suggest that, with his pledge on religious
schools, John Tory handed the Liberals another four years in office. It’s hard
to dispute that was the biggest factor. But part of the reason Mr. Tory and his
ill-advised promise became the focal point of the campaign is that Dalton
McGuinty gave his enemies very little to fire at.
When he took over the Liberal leadership in 1996, Mr. McGuinty flustered so
easily that he would have been hard pressed to remember his own name under
pressure. But he’s morphed into a remarkably adept politician. As we discovered
when he visited our editorial board last week, it’s impossible to get him
off-message. Ask any question, no matter how pointed, and he’ll give the
appearance of answering it while returning to his talking points within five to
10 seconds.
His opponents alleged, accurately, that he was operating inside a bubble -
avoiding any uncontrolled situations in which he interacted with voters. But
with a lead in the polls, and his primary opponent busy self-destructing, his
main task was to stay out of trouble. And save for one extremely uncomfortable
encounter with an Ottawa cancer patient (see below), he did just that. Even in
the leaders debate, with Messrs. Tory and Hampton hammering him, he avoided any
slip-ups.
With most of the same players around from their 2003 win, the Liberals also
had going for them the slickest of the three campaigns. Their TV ads were better
and their day-to-day operations ensured Mr. McGuinty stayed out of those
unscripted situations he was so desperate to avoid. They correctly identified
off the top that they could make the campaign about religious education. And
they adopted the time-tested strategy of having their leader stay positive -
talking about all the wonderful things he’d done in his first four years - while
his ministers and spin doctors conducted more aggressive attacks against Mr.
Tory.
For putting forward interesting policy ideas, Mr. McGuinty would be lucky to
get a “D.” For providing those of us covering the election with fodder, he would
get an “F.” But he wouldn’t care about either of those; in fact, I’m not even
sure he cares whether Ontarians like him. Mr. McGuinty’s focus was on running a
smooth, disciplined campaign that would get him re-elected. And on that front,
he did an impressive job.
Best Day: Sept. 21, 2007
A- “The Premier did a good job of shaking off the effects of the tag-team
assault on him the night before. Holding a big rally in front of cheering
Liberals was a nice way to look like a winner, and the line about Tory and
Hampton becoming a hot celebrity couple - ‘HoJo’ - was pretty clever.”
NOW: Mr. McGuinty’s campaign worked because he kept it even keel. But this
was the day he cemented his hold on power. By shaking off the blows thrown at
him in the leaders debate the night before, he put an end to the perception that
he was on the ropes.
Worst Day: Sept. 26, 2007
D “Man, this was ugly. When someone with colon cancer accuses you of not
doing enough to let them live, you don’t inform them in three words that they’re
wrong and shuffle off to find someone more friendly.”
NOW: Mr. McGuinty’s exchange in an Ottawa hospital with Mike Brady, captured
on camera, could have derailed his entire campaign. It didn’t, but it made the
Premier’s handlers more determined than ever to avoid uncontrolled public
events.
C-
JOHN TORY
John Tory is a successful businessman, exemplary private citizen and all-around nice guy. But it appears he’s not an especially good politician.
That, at least, is the only conclusion to be drawn from his spectacular
failure to anticipate how the public would respond to his pledge to publicly
fund religious schools, and his inability to do damage control once that
reaction became clear.
Mr. Tory says he knew from advance polling his promise would be a tough sell.
But what he clearly expected was that, even if a majority opposed the idea, it
would be low enough on those voters’ list of concerns that it wouldn’t affect
their decision. Meanwhile, it would provide inroads into minority communities,
where it would be enough of a ballot question to help the Tories take a bunch of
extra seats. Instead, those opposed to it turned out to feel very strongly
indeed. Had Mr. Tory recognized this sooner, he could have softened or abandoned
the promise in the campaign’s first week, and after some initial ridicule it
might have blown over. Instead, he did the worst possible thing - painting it as
a matter of principle, then backing away with a week to go. By then, it was too
late to erase it as a campaign issue; all he did was make himself look less
principled.
That the religious schools pledge came to define Mr. Tory underscored another
shortcoming - his inability to articulate a clear vision for the province that
differed from Mr. McGuinty’s. Even in the debate, in which he generally
performed well, he spent so much time criticizing the Liberal Leader that he
neglected to lay out his own policies. And when he did make promises, they were
scattershot.
A final problem was the way he was presented to voters. Mr. Tory is an
inherently likeable guy. But that didn’t come through in his TV ads or on the
news. Instead, he looked angry and negative as he attacked Mr. McGuinty’s
record. The message should have been that he was no average politician; instead,
he came off like a mid-level U.S. congressional candidate.
Mr. Tory’s campaign was not without its moments, mostly when he showed his
personable side talking to average voters. But when a campaign ends with the
leader hard pressed even to win his own riding, it has to be considered a dismal
failure.
Best Day: Sept. 20, 2007
A- “This was the John Tory that Conservatives thought - or at least hoped -
they were getting when they picked him as leader. Well prepared and completely
at ease in the spotlight, he cut the most appealing figure during the
debate.”
NOW: The leaders debate was one of the few times that Mr. Tory was able to
get away from religious schools, since the leaders were mandated to talk about
other issues. He made the most of it, striking the right tone in his attacks on
Mr. McGuinty. But he was never able to use it to build momentum.
Worst Day: Oct. 1, 2007
D- “There’s no way to view what happened on Monday in isolation, so call this
one a cumulative grade. It’s official: He sabotaged his own campaign for no good
reason whatsoever.”
NOW: A bunch of people asked that day whether I’d be giving Tory an “F” for
his climb-down on religious schools. I didn’t, because at least his actions
spared him a caucus mutiny. But by backtracking so late, he acknowledged that
he’d wasted the first three weeks on a matter of “principle” he was now willing
to drop.
C
HOWARD HAMPTON
Last Thursday I wrote that Howard Hampton appeared to be reaching the end of
his rope. In the midst of a third straight futile campaign as NDP Leader, he had
openly speculated to The Toronto Sun’s editorial board on Wednesday that he
might be “the wrong person” for the job. It was in keeping with his tone in the
campaign’s latter stages; when he’d visited our own editorial board at the start
of the week, there was little pretense his party had much chance on election
day.
Still, I hadn’t quite realized the depths of his frustration. On Thursday
afternoon, Mt. Hampton erupted. He lashed out at John Tory for allowing the
religious education debate to hijack the campaign, but saved most of his ire for
reporters, demanding to know why they weren’t paying more attention to his
campaign and his issues. “We’ve become the child poverty capital of Canada -
don’t any of you people care?” he bellowed. “Don’t you care that there are
seniors living in soiled diapers? Don’t you care about that? I’m asking you,
what do you care about?” After a campaign dominated by a single issue, Mr.
Hampton’s complaint wasn’t entirely without merit. But he can also blame a
couple of baffling errors in judgment for his inability yet again to gain
traction with voters.
The first, more minor mistake was the NDP’s lack of preparedness for the
start of the campaign. Rather than trying to set the agenda, Mr. Hampton waited
several days before unveiling his platform. With the NDP needing a big splash to
avoid becoming an afterthought, that marginalized them from the outset.
The bigger problem was that Mr. Hampton declined to make the one pitch that
could have increased the NDP’s support base. With polls showing the potential
for a minority government, he should have openly campaigned for the balance of
power - something Jack Layton, did in the last two federal elections. By
outlining all the progressive things the NDP would force Dalton McGuinty to do,
he could have won over enough left-leaning Liberals to increase his seat
count.
Midway through the campaign, Mr. Hampton briefly broached this subject. Then
he reverted to his usual script, declining to make the case for a minority
government even when given the chance. That, as much as its lack of concern for
the poor and the elderly, is why the media went back to largely ignoring
him.
Best Day: Sept. 24, 2007
B+ “The smartest thing for Mr. Hampton to do from here on out is to try to
convince those straddling the fence between the Liberals and the NDP that he’s
offering them a combination of the two. This was a modest start, but it suggests
he might know enough to stop pretending he’s going to be premier.”
NOW: So much for that theory. Mr. Hampton’s speculation on a minority
government made him seem like a player. Then he went back to his usual script,
and most of the province went back to ignoring him.
Worst Day: Oct. 4, 2007
D “Hampton blew a gasket, lashing out at reporters for failing to give him
and his issues the coverage they deserved. … I’m sorry, but this is loser
talk. Every NDP leader struggles to get media attention. The good ones find a
way.”
NOW: This was the culmination of not just a frustrating campaign for Mr.
Hampton, but a frustrating career as leader. It’s understandable that he lost
his patience, but effectively conceding six days before the election isn’t a
brilliant strategy.