Ontario Liberal leadership race

[King of Kensington]

Haven't seen a thread on this.

A group of Ontario Liberals are trying to recruit Green leader Mike Schreiner to cross the floor and run for the leadership.

https://www.draftmike.ca/

Some big names have signed including former finance minister Greg Sorbara. 

And it sounds like Schreiner is thinking about it:

https://twitter.com/MikeSchreiner/status/1620180527000223745/photo/1

[RogueBeaver]

NES, Naqvi and Hsu are the current candidates. Only remote comparison for Schreiner I can think of is PCs trying to draft Harper 25 years ago, and Schreiner won't be merging the parties.

[Benjamin Frank]

NES, Naqvi and Hsu are the current candidates. Only remote comparison for Schreiner I can think of is PCs trying to draft Harper 25 years ago, and Schreiner won't be merging the parties.

I like Nethanial Erskine Smith, but as I read about a candidate in some other leadership race just a few days ago (I think it was James Laxer) "a guy who isn't a team player shouldn't lead the team."

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

NES, Naqvi and Hsu are the current candidates. Only remote comparison for Schreiner I can think of is PCs trying to draft Harper 25 years ago, and Schreiner won't be merging the parties.

I like Nethanial Erskine Smith, but as I read about a candidate in some other leadership race just a few days ago (I think it was James Laxer) "a guy who isn't a team player shouldn't lead the team."

Erskine-Smith would be interesting in that it would be a shakeup to the old OLP formula of picking bland establishment politicians who are very good at organizing (that's what Del Duca was supposed to be, but we all saw how that turned out, so it makes sense to want to shake things up).

But tbh, I agree with that James Laxer quote as far as NES goes. Political observers and journalists love a maverick, but they don't usually make for great leaders of large, existing organizations. There's also the question of whether he's fishing out of the same pond as Marit Stiles - both downtown Toronto progressives, only Stiles has a stronger political resume and leads a party that is currently much bigger than the OLP by every metric.

I'd make the same move if I were Nate though. His career isn't going anywhere federally, and he's still young, so why not take the chance

[adma]

Interesting to note that the 3rd place candidate in the 1982 OLP leadership race, Richard Thomas (who came within six votes of defeating the PCs' Ernie Eves in Parry Sound in  '81), moved on to the Green Party and got, at 17.64%, their best pre-Y2K result in Ontario in '90 (pushing the NDP, in their Bob Rae landslide year, into their only 4th-place/lost-deposit finish)

[Hatman 🍁]

Begging Schreiner to lead the party reeks of desperation.

[DL]

Begging Schreiner to lead the party reeks of desperation.

No kidding. Where is the logic in "we have only 8 seats and our only solution is to ask the leader of a party with 1 seat and that got just 6% of the vote election to lead us". Schreiner's main claim to fame is being a "nice guy" who everyone likes as long as he is a gadfly leading party of one. There is no reason to believe that he would have any political talent leading a serious party with competing players and interests and in any case if the OLP wants to become competitive in 905 suburbs - not sure how having a leader who is a single issue environmental fanatic who wants massive increases in carbon taxes and road tolls etc... is the solution.

[Benjamin Frank]

Begging Schreiner to lead the party reeks of desperation.

No kidding. Where is the logic in "we have only 8 seats and our only solution is to ask the leader of a party with 1 seat and that got just 6% of the vote election to lead us". Schreiner's main claim to fame is being a "nice guy" who everyone likes as long as he is a gadfly leading party of one. There is no reason to believe that he would have any political talent leading a serious party with competing players and interests and in any case if the OLP wants to become competitive in 905 suburbs - not sure how having a leader who is a single issue environmental fanatic who wants massive increases in carbon taxes and road tolls etc... is the solution.

Ted Hsu seems to be the obvious choice. Not only is he a current Liberal MPP, he was highly respected as an M.P during his one term from 2011-2015. He also has a background with the environment and should also be regarded as interesting and given respect by the public (to the degree they're aware) as a PhD physicist.

[King of Kensington]

Schreiner might be a good choice if the Ontario Liberals want to become like the Lib Dems in the UK.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Begging Schreiner to lead the party reeks of desperation.

I hope for the OLP's sake that this is just routine silly season nonsense that happens in leadership elections. I remember in the last OLP leadership, people were suggesting John Tory. You know, the guy who spent most of his life affiliated with the Liberals' biggest rivals. There was also a short-lived "draft Chris Hadfield" trend around that time. I'm sure there's a joke there, something along the lines of how the OLP had so little talent they had to search for leaders in outer space.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Begging Schreiner to lead the party reeks of desperation.

No kidding. Where is the logic in "we have only 8 seats and our only solution is to ask the leader of a party with 1 seat and that got just 6% of the vote election to lead us". Schreiner's main claim to fame is being a "nice guy" who everyone likes as long as he is a gadfly leading party of one. There is no reason to believe that he would have any political talent leading a serious party with competing players and interests and in any case if the OLP wants to become competitive in 905 suburbs - not sure how having a leader who is a single issue environmental fanatic who wants massive increases in carbon taxes and road tolls etc... is the solution.

I call this the Elizabeth May effect. In 2019, she was the most favourably-viewed federal party leader. I assure you, if Elizabeth May was anywhere near wielding any sort of political power, she would not be popular. If you actually look at what the Green Party pushes, it's a mishmash of very drastic environmental policies that most Canadians wouldn't actually support in practice, a random assortment of big social spending promises, while also bizarrely promising to balance the budget.

But nobody took Elizabeth May seriously, which means she's non-threatening. She was just seen as Canada's kooky aunt. Nobody actually cared whether her policies or promises made any sense, or that her party's stances on anything other than climate (arguably even on climate) were an incoherent mess. But she had the luxury of going on the debate stage and dunking on Trudeau and Scheer, neither of whom were particularly popular, so people liked her for just that. But if she had somehow taken over the LPC post-Ignatieff, i.e. been in a position where she could conceivably lead the country, I guarantee you, 2015 would have given us Prime Minister Mulcair.

[Benjamin Frank]

Begging Schreiner to lead the party reeks of desperation.

No kidding. Where is the logic in "we have only 8 seats and our only solution is to ask the leader of a party with 1 seat and that got just 6% of the vote election to lead us". Schreiner's main claim to fame is being a "nice guy" who everyone likes as long as he is a gadfly leading party of one. There is no reason to believe that he would have any political talent leading a serious party with competing players and interests and in any case if the OLP wants to become competitive in 905 suburbs - not sure how having a leader who is a single issue environmental fanatic who wants massive increases in carbon taxes and road tolls etc... is the solution.

I call this the Elizabeth May effect. In 2019, she was the most favourably-viewed federal party leader. I assure you, if Elizabeth May was anywhere near wielding any sort of political power, she would not be popular. If you actually look at what the Green Party pushes, it's a mishmash of very drastic environmental policies that most Canadians wouldn't actually support in practice, a random assortment of big social spending promises, while also bizarrely promising to balance the budget.

But nobody took Elizabeth May seriously, which means she's non-threatening. She was just seen as Canada's kooky aunt. Nobody actually cared whether her policies or promises made any sense, or that her party's stances on anything other than climate (arguably even on climate) were an incoherent mess. But she had the luxury of going on the debate stage and dunking on Trudeau and Scheer, neither of whom were particularly popular, so people liked her for just that. But if she had somehow taken over the LPC post-Ignatieff, i.e. been in a position where she could conceivably lead the country, I guarantee you, 2015 would have given us Prime Minister Mulcair.

I like to think if Schreiner were taken more seriously, that a number of things he said in the debate to Doug Ford wouldn't have been referred to as 'passionate' but as demagoguery.

[adma]

Ted Hsu seems to be the obvious choice. Not only is he a current Liberal MPP, he was highly respected as an M.P during his one term from 2011-2015. He also has a background with the environment and should also be regarded as interesting and given respect by the public (to the degree they're aware) as a PhD physicist.

Which'd make him the most "ivory towerish" OLP leader since Stuart Smith.

[DL]

The thing about leaders of "micro parties" like Elizabeth May or Mike Schreiner is also that people like them because no one has ever told them not to like them. Its never been in anyone's interest to ever attack or challenge May or Schreiner and I suspect both would wilt very very quickly under the klieg lights of leading a major party that elicits attacks etc...

[Хahar 🤔]

So far only Canadians have posted in this thread, so I'll jump in. I'm surprised at the negative reaction among the Canadians here to the idea of poaching Schreiner. Even though the NDP forms the official opposition, plenty of Ontarians think of the OLP as the alternative government. There were several times during the last Parliament when the Liberals polled comparably to or higher than the Tories; there was never any meaningful span of time when the NDP did so. What hurt the OLP in 2022 was a poor campaign headed by a no-name leader.

Schreiner fixes a lot of these problems immediately. The media has covered him positively and there's every reason to think that it will continue to do so, thereby framing him as the premier-in-waiting. adma has posted repeatedly about the tendency of Canadian media to dismiss the NDP and treat elections as a Liberal-Tory two-horse race regardless of the actual facts at hand. With Schreiner they'd have their man to do that effectively. Getting him would also probably kneecap the Green Party, which received six percent of the vote in 2022; if the leader of the party those people voted for is now saying that to get green policies they should vote Liberal, that's a difficult argument to pass up.

Maybe Schreiner is a no-talent hack who would be eaten alive in Queen's Park if anyone focused their attention on him, and maybe his transportation policies would destroy the OLP in the 905. But in the short run, poaching him would do more than anything else could to project the credibility of the Liberal Party as the next government of Ontario.

[Benjamin Frank]

NES, Naqvi and Hsu are the current candidates. Only remote comparison for Schreiner I can think of is PCs trying to draft Harper 25 years ago, and Schreiner won't be merging the parties.

I like Nethanial Erskine Smith, but as I read about a candidate in some other leadership race just a few days ago (I think it was James Laxer) "a guy who isn't a team player shouldn't lead the team."

Erskine-Smith would be interesting in that it would be a shakeup to the old OLP formula of picking bland establishment politicians who are very good at organizing (that's what Del Duca was supposed to be, but we all saw how that turned out, so it makes sense to want to shake things up).

But tbh, I agree with that James Laxer quote as far as NES goes. Political observers and journalists love a maverick, but they don't usually make for great leaders of large, existing organizations. There's also the question of whether he's fishing out of the same pond as Marit Stiles - both downtown Toronto progressives, only Stiles has a stronger political resume and leads a party that is currently much bigger than the OLP by every metric.

I'd make the same move if I were Nate though. His career isn't going anywhere federally, and he's still young, so why not take the chance

Just to correct myself, I wondered how it could be Jim Laxer, because, while I'm sure he was no team player, since he was never elected to Parliament he was never even part of the team.

The quote was about Svend Robinson who ran for the NDP leadership in 1995.

As an aside, the book I read this in, I think it's called something like Dreamers and Ideologues, the History of the CCF and NDP, The CCF was looking to rebrand itself (and possibly merge with the unions as well) as early as 1953, as it was looking to ditch the Regina Manifesto (which it did in 1956 with the Winnipeg Declaration.)

[adma]

The thing about leaders of "micro parties" like Elizabeth May or Mike Schreiner is also that people like them because no one has ever told them not to like them. Its never been in anyone's interest to ever attack or challenge May or Schreiner and I suspect both would wilt very very quickly under the klieg lights of leading a major party that elicits attacks etc...

Still, not all micro-party leaders are made equal, as the case of Annamie Paul proves.

So far only Canadians have posted in this thread, so I'll jump in. I'm surprised at the negative reaction among the Canadians here to the idea of poaching Schreiner. Even though the NDP forms the official opposition, plenty of Ontarians think of the OLP as the alternative government. There were several times during the last Parliament when the Liberals polled comparably to or higher than the Tories; there was never any meaningful span of time when the NDP did so. What hurt the OLP in 2022 was a poor campaign headed by a no-name leader.

Schreiner fixes a lot of these problems immediately. The media has covered him positively and there's every reason to think that it will continue to do so, thereby framing him as the premier-in-waiting. adma has posted repeatedly about the tendency of Canadian media to dismiss the NDP and treat elections as a Liberal-Tory two-horse race regardless of the actual facts at hand. With Schreinter they'd have their man to do that effectively. Getting him would also probably kneecap the Green Party, which received six percent of the vote in 2022; if the leader of the party those people voted for is now saying that to get green policies they should vote Liberal, that's a difficult argument to pass up.

Maybe Schreiner is a no-talent hack who would be eaten alive in Queen's Park if anyone focused their attention on him, and maybe his transportation policies would destroy the OLP in the 905. But in the short run, poaching him would do more than anything else could to project the credibility of the Liberal Party as the next government of Ontario.

Actually, relative to a potential OLP leadership bid, the best thing Schreiner has going for him is that he's as disarmingly bland and dull as Green leaders get--a boring cisgender white male with glasses--and thus *could* morph into the leadership role and even the premiership with ease in a province where, in the words of Bill Davis, "bland works".

But re polling prior to the last election: let's also remember that for those being polled, the default Liberal *brand* can be boosted by association/conflation with the spotlight-hogging federal party (you even find this pattern in Manitoba, where the provincial Liberals typically overperform in polls in between writs).  Plus, there's a difference btw/having the wind knocked out after *one* election and having the wind knocked out after *two* elections--that is, for the OLP, the looming Kitchener Centre byelection is probably a harder "get" now than it would have been had it happened during Doug Ford's first term (when there were surprisingly few byelections--and coincidentally, all of them were in previously-held Liberal seats and continued to be safe holds).  Though of course, a Schreiner Liberal leadership coupled w/Mike Morrice federally would be a godsend for the Libs in Kitchener Centre...

[DL]

I suspect that even without Schreiner - there will always be 5-6% of Ontarians that will vote for any part with the word "Green" in its name. Interesting that I have read zero about what Green party members and activists think of the fact that their leader is even considering ditching them for a possible OLP leadership run. You'd think the media would be all over them. And, in any other party there would be a move afoot to dump a leader who was openly considering leaving his or her own party.

[Hatman 🍁]

Notwithstanding any current polling (which as adma pointed out, has a lot to do with the "Liberal brand" still being strong in the province), the Liberals are in disarray right now. They had a good chance last time to convert their polling into a second place finish, but they blew it. Things will really need to shake up in the province for them to overcome that again. 

[DL]

One thing I find very interesting is what this whole "draft Schreiner" story says about internal divisions in the OLP. Some of the people signing the letter wanting Schreiner to be leader and pretty prominent insiders from the Wynne era and yet one of the likely candidates for leader is Yasir Naqvi who was a cabinet minister in the Wynne gov't and was also president of the OLP. You would think that he would scoop up support from those establishment figures...unless maybe they all hate him want to stop him at all cost?

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

So far only Canadians have posted in this thread, so I'll jump in. I'm surprised at the negative reaction among the Canadians here to the idea of poaching Schreiner. Even though the NDP forms the official opposition, plenty of Ontarians think of the OLP as the alternative government. There were several times during the last Parliament when the Liberals polled comparably to or higher than the Tories; there was never any meaningful span of time when the NDP did so. What hurt the OLP in 2022 was a poor campaign headed by a no-name leader.

Schreiner fixes a lot of these problems immediately. The media has covered him positively and there's every reason to think that it will continue to do so, thereby framing him as the premier-in-waiting. adma has posted repeatedly about the tendency of Canadian media to dismiss the NDP and treat elections as a Liberal-Tory two-horse race regardless of the actual facts at hand. With Schreinter they'd have their man to do that effectively. Getting him would also probably kneecap the Green Party, which received six percent of the vote in 2022; if the leader of the party those people voted for is now saying that to get green policies they should vote Liberal, that's a difficult argument to pass up.

Maybe Schreiner is a no-talent hack who would be eaten alive in Queen's Park if anyone focused their attention on him, and maybe his transportation policies would destroy the OLP in the 905. But in the short run, poaching him would do more than anything else could to project the credibility of the Liberal Party as the next government of Ontario.

I think the last paragraph is where most of us are coming from. Green Party leaders like May and Schreiner who are relevant enough to be well-known, but nowhere near holding power. What that means is that they basically only get positive coverage, because nobody really has much to gain from dunking on them, but political journalists sure love a "scrappy upstart" story

Like Benjamin Frank said, his widely-praised debate performance in 2022 could easily have been considered out-and-out demagoguery instead of passionate idealism. But on the debate stage where Ford, Del Duca and Horwath were all gunning for the top job, Schreiner got to play what is essentially a "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" role where he gets to criticize the powerful without being considered one of the powerful. As Liberal leader, he wouldn't have that luxury.

I don't think bringing Schreiner would meaningfully kneecap the Green Party, although losing their one seat in Guelph won't help. The reason is, there's a certain small group of Canadians who vote for the "Green" brand above all else. Maybe the Liberals could pick 1-2% off of the Greens, which won't amount to much. Because ultimately, Schreiner is too fiscally conservative to quash the NDP, and the Green stuff doesn't fly in the "Trudeau-Ford" parts of Ontario (the Greens almost always do worst in the 905 belt, they even do better in rural farmland).

[DL]

I see people sometimes describe Green leaders in Canada as "more fiscally conservative" than the NDP. I'm not sure where people get that idea since in almost every case the Green Party has a pie in the sky platform that promises to spend way more and tax way more than the NDP would ever dare to propose.

[Хahar 🤔]

I suspect that even without Schreiner - there will always be 5-6% of Ontarians that will vote for any part with the word "Green" in its name. Interesting that I have read zero about what Green party members and activists think of the fact that their leader is even considering ditching them for a possible OLP leadership run. You'd think the media would be all over them. And, in any other party there would be a move afoot to dump a leader who was openly considering leaving his or her own party.

This is kind of a strange argument to me considering that the Green Party of Ontario polled below 5% in the three elections before 2022 and that its vote has in fact fluctuated significantly. From 2007 to 2011, the Green vote fell from 8% to 3%, which is not a great argument for the idea that the Green vote is inelastic and the same people will vote Green no matter what. In 2021 we saw the federal Green vote collapse in the absence of a well-known leader with media skills. (Please note here that I'm not saying anything about Elizabeth May's seriousness here and that I'm just observing the positive traits that she shares with Mike Schreiner.) Unless the Green Party of Ontario were to find a new leader with those same characteristics and the ability to stop the demoralizing effects of having the existing leader join another party, I'm reasonably confident that its vote share would be affected.

I agree that it's interesting that we haven't heard much about what Green Party activists think about this. Mike Schreiner's letter mentions his friends and colleagues in the Green Party, but really his actions do not suggest that he cares much about what they think, either.

I don't think bringing Schreiner would meaningfully kneecap the Green Party, although losing their one seat in Guelph won't help. The reason is, there's a certain small group of Canadians who vote for the "Green" brand above all else. Maybe the Liberals could pick 1-2% off of the Greens, which won't amount to much.

Even if we accept that it would be one to two percentage points off the Green vote (and, again, the example of the federal Greens suggests that there's further to fall than that), that may not be much to the Liberals, but for the Greens that would mean losing up to a third of their 2022 vote. That's pretty significant!

[King of Kensington]

The Greens benefitted from very low turnout, a sense that Ford had the election in the bag, and Schreiner's presence in the debate (where he did well).

[Continential]

I decided to do some back of the envelope math to see what seats would flip if half of the Green vote in every constituency goes to the Liberals and the seats that flip are

Guelph (the Greens are still in second)
Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte (from the PCs)
Etobicoke-Lakeshore (from the PCs)
Eglinton-Lawrence (from the PCs)
Toronto-St. Paul's (from the NDP)

PC 80
NDP 30
Liberals 12

Universal swing isn't how elections work but I have nowhere else to post this so I'll post this here.