Ontario Liberal leadership race

[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."

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[Benjamin Frank]

Anyway, one advantage for the Libs is that they know who is going to lead the NDP. The next leader should be someone who can offer something that Marit Stiles can't, to excite ABC voters. Their federal counterparts struck gold in 2015 with Trudeau, someone whose platform was virtually interchangeable with Mulcair's, except he was younger, more handsome, more famous, and 100x more energetic. There's not going to be someone of Trudeau's caliber, I honestly can't think of anyone who can do this. But if they can find someone who can at least be on the same level as Stiles, be that rhetorically, name-recognition, experience, whatever, the longevity of the Liberal brand just might be enough. Del Duca was supposed to do that, except he somehow turned out to be even more underwhelming than Horwath.

This is a notion that I haven't yet seen voiced: Marit Stiles as an Andrea II rather than a Rachel Notley-style premier-in-waiting charismatic figurehead.  Or, most of the voiced skepticism and concern trolling I've witnessed has less to do with who she is than with the fact that she was acclaimed for the leadership.

That's not at all what I was suggesting lol. I think Marit Stiles is a huge step up from Horwath. What I mean is that because the Liberals know who the NDP leader in the next election will be, they know who they have to beat to get the ABC vote around them. So in that sense, the OLP should focus more on who is most likely to beat Stiles for the ABC vote, because it wouldn't take much of a drop for the PCs for a strong ABC Coalition to win.

You're referring to what's called in game theory as 'second mover advantage.'
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mde.3494

I'm not sure it applies here, but you could be right.

[Benjamin Frank]

Anyway, one advantage for the Libs is that they know who is going to lead the NDP. The next leader should be someone who can offer something that Marit Stiles can't, to excite ABC voters. Their federal counterparts struck gold in 2015 with Trudeau, someone whose platform was virtually interchangeable with Mulcair's, except he was younger, more handsome, more famous, and 100x more energetic. There's not going to be someone of Trudeau's caliber, I honestly can't think of anyone who can do this. But if they can find someone who can at least be on the same level as Stiles, be that rhetorically, name-recognition, experience, whatever, the longevity of the Liberal brand just might be enough. Del Duca was supposed to do that, except he somehow turned out to be even more underwhelming than Horwath.

This is a notion that I haven't yet seen voiced: Marit Stiles as an Andrea II rather than a Rachel Notley-style premier-in-waiting charismatic figurehead.  Or, most of the voiced skepticism and concern trolling I've witnessed has less to do with who she is than with the fact that she was acclaimed for the leadership.

That's not at all what I was suggesting lol. I think Marit Stiles is a huge step up from Horwath. What I mean is that because the Liberals know who the NDP leader in the next election will be, they know who they have to beat to get the ABC vote around them. So in that sense, the OLP should focus more on who is most likely to beat Stiles for the ABC vote, because it wouldn't take much of a drop for the PCs for a strong ABC Coalition to win.

Still, I'm referring to the inability-to-excite-ABC-voters part.  So if, implicitly, Marit Stiles is a "huge step up" and she's *still* unable to engender that kind of excitement, well...

I wouldn't say she's unable to excite ABC voters, although that obviously remains to be seen. If anything, the Liberals probably have a bigger task on their hands. Right now, literally the only thing the OLP has over the NDP is brand loyalty and generally being taken more seriously as a party. Like you said that's a major advantage, but the disadvantages are also clear. Much less funding, no party status, and such a scarcity of talent that people are considering a guy who doesn't even affiliate with said party. If Ontarians want Ford out in 2026 and the Liberals don't have a solid leader, I think the NDP will close the deal by default (at least enough to deny Ford a majority).

Rereading your original quote, I probably mentally projected a "that is," predicate to your "to excite ABC voters".

But yes, as per my earlier point about the ONDP as the "shut up, Meg" party: it could well be that Stiles "can't win", much in the manner of Horwath--who as I said, was never really the dud leader she's often claimed to be; more that she was a more-than-competent leader of a party that was never seriously expected to form government...until it came to the brink of doing so.  (It'd be like the inverse of, federally, Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough both being viewable as "duds" because the NDP was at its electoral nadir under their watch--yet whatever the actual ballot-box or seat-count results, w/Alexa came a "renewal energy" that was really a foundation for the Jack Layton era.)  And that Horwath nearly blew her Hamilton mayoral race has more to do with amalgamated Hamilton (and Ottawa) being like unicity Winnipeg; that is, "socialist hordes" running for mayor facing a glass ceiling...

I met Audrey McLaughlin once. She's a very intelligent person and seemed to be a nice person as well. She was really in an impossible situation in the 1993 election, but handled herself with total class and exhibited a great deal of energy and effort.

[Benjamin Frank]

I can't stand "vote for me and I'll be the same as the current guy" politicians. Crombie's critique of Wynne gov't is literally the same as what Ford used to say in 2018 - it speaks to a lack of a backbone to criticize your own party more than your opponent as you're hinting at wanting to lead said party - and the theory of "Liberals need to be centre-right to win the 905" line is a little outdated, because I'm sure Crombie knows that Justin Trudeau had a clean sweep three clean sweeps of Mississauga while running as the most left-wing Liberal leader since his father. If Crombie wants to give voters two centre-right options, they will go for the authentic centre-right option.

Well to be fair she's not entirely the same as Ford. Ford's not a NIMBY.

Of all of the Ontario provincial elections in the last two or three decades, I can't remember a single time when Ontario Liberals won an election on a left-of-centre platform, with 2014 being an exception, but that was due to Tim Hudak being a little too frank about his plan to dismiss large numbers of public sector workers.


In general, I would say OLP does better when they run on a centre to centre-right platform, as in, promising not to raise taxes (McGuinty 2003), or even promising tax cuts (McGuinty 2011).

That's fair, but I think times have changed. Politics is more polarized than it used to be, and while this is somewhat anecdotal, the Trudeau era seems to have dramatically changed what the Liberal Party looks like. Many of the insiders today are progressive millennials who were inspired by Trudeau (and their hatred of Harper) to get into politics, which basically describes Erskine-Smith. Much of the Liberal base is also the same. When you look at LPC and OLP conventions for example that reliably vote for left-wing policy proposals, it's not clear to me that today's Liberals would actually accept a "centre-right" platform.

The other thing is that in McGuinty's runs, being more centrist worked in part because Liberals could still win rural areas. Ridings like Perth-Wellington, Lambton-Middlesex, Prince Edward-Hastings etc voted Liberal in his two majorities. Today, it's almost inconceivable that Liberals would win such ridings, short of a landslide. When those ridings left the Liberals in 2011, McGuinty lost his majority - Wynne won it back, not by winning back those ridings, but by maxing out the GTA (and yes, Hudak helped in that regard).

Point is, the path to a Liberal win in Ontario today looks a little different than it may have in the past, because it's a much more urban and cosmopolitan party than it used to be 20 years ago. I'm not sure a Ford-lite platform would really work for them.

2003 and 2007 pretty much were landslides. Both 70/100 seats approximately.

The article above mentioned Ted Hsu also announced he's running. For what it's worth (nothing) I endorse him.

https://www.tedhsu.ca/