Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 1, 2018
With Doug Ford joining PC leadership race, all bets are off
Your mom’s basement is a rather inauspicious venue to announce your ambition to become premier of Ontario, but anybody who underestimates Doug Ford’s chances to win the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership does so at their peril.
October 30, 2014
Ford declared his candidacy on Monday to lead a party in deep turmoil following the resignation of leader Patrick Brown over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Ford is quickly trying to position himself as the populist choice in the race, the outsider, railing against the elites.
“Folks, make no mistake about it,” he said in his short statement from the basement of his mother’s Etobicoke house. “The elites of this party, the ones who have shut out the grassroots, do not want me in this race. But I’m here to give a voice to the hard-working taxpayers of this province, people who have been ignored for far too long.”
Ford’s message might just resonate with a good chunk of the PC membership. And don’t forget Ford’s message already has proven popular with no small number of people in Toronto.
When he stepped into the shoes of his better-known brother Rob Ford to run for mayor in 2014, he came second but won 20 of the city’s 44 wards. He trounced John Tory in Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York, the key parts of Toronto that the PCs must swing their way to form a majority provincial government. It`s not a stretch to think he could replicate that success in the 905, the crucial battleground of Ontario politics, and of course in traditional Tory strongholds too. (Continued: CBC)
Here’s Doug Ford viewing the cartoon during an interview with Cynthia Mulligan, political reporter with CityNews Toronto on March 12, 2018, the Monday after the weekend vote which declared him leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party: