Why Bonnie Crombie’s move into provincial politics has been tricky

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Okay, quick, name the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party before Bonnie Crombie.

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No, not John Fraser. He was the interim leader, a caretaker who took that role twice after two consecutive disaster elections for the Liberals.

Give up? His name was Steven Del Duca.

His name still is Steven Del Duca, of course, and he is mayor of Vaughan, Ont., but for the average Ontario voter he lives in the past tense, that bald guy after Kathleen Wynne, couldn’t hold his own seat, you know, whassisname.

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His obsolescence should be Bonnie Crombie’s great opportunity.

She is in her first election leading a broken, humbled party, a bit like Justin Trudeau after the Michael Ignatieff debacle.

It would seem there is nowhere to go but up, to take back official opposition status from the NDP, to live up to the role of premier-in-waiting that Premier Doug Ford has cast her in with his frequent direct personal attacks, and his almost total ignoring of NDP Leader Marit Stiles. And yet, this is proving tricky.

Crombie’s personal branding should be good. She is in a successful tradition of western Toronto area suburban political leaders with a recognizable first name, like her predecessor as mayor of Mississauga Hazel McCallion, and indeed like Ford himself.

Crombie, 65, has been a federal Liberal MP, and has extensive private sector experience in marketing and government relations. But she has never held a seat in Queen’s Park.

She has three grown children with her ex-husband Brian Crombie, a radio host who ran to replace her as mayor of Mississauga, losing to Carolyn Parrish.

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“We don’t know her, and that’s the problem. People in Mississauga know her. But outside of that we don’t know,” said Geneviève Tellier, professor of political science at the University of Ottawa

She is no political neophyte, but her experience doesn’t show. “We don’t get the impression she brings all she has learned before, bringing it into policy,” Tellier said.

It has been a difficult transition from municipal to provincial politics, which is surprising, Tellier said. “She should understand that dynamics change from one level to the other, and we don’t have that sense.”

Instead, Crombie comes across as trying to “replicate” a style that has worked for someone else, a little bit Hazel, even a little bit Doug. “She wants to be (like) Doug Ford and she’s not.”

“Successful politicians shape policy around their own personality. If they try to borrow, it does not work well,” Tellier said.

Free from the ideological constraints of party politics, successful mayors, like Crombie and McCallion, “can be ideologically ambiguous,” said Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, professor and graduate chair in political studies at Queen’s University.

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“They take licence to move around freely on especially fiscal issues,” she said. So when they get into party politics “sometimes their record can be criticized or picked apart. But it’s a different level, it’s a different game.

Her victory for party leadership, against the more progressive Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, pushes the party to the centre, where it bumps up against Ford’s Progressive Conservatives, even as it aims to distance itself from the federal Liberals on matters like the carbon tax.

“Crombie is in a real jam on the party label issue,” Goodyear-Grant said, and her strategic response has been to focus on Team Bonnie, not drawing on the campaign support of federal Liberals for fear of making unfavourable linkages in the public mind.

“I suspect they believed they had more time,” said Tamara Small, professor of political science at the University of Guelph. “This will make the debates very interesting. For many people this will be a very important introduction to these leaders even though they’ve been here for a long time.”

Small said elections are both retrospective evaluations of past leadership and prospective judgments about who is best to deal with the future.

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“You’ve got to be making arguments to both those things,” Small said.

A problem for Crombie is that she gets caught up in competition with the NDP for the votes of people dissatisfied with Ford’s PCs, and as a result ends up being reactive to Ford’s attacks on her, with little control over which issues are in the forefront of the public mind.

“Doug Ford for strategic reasons has made a very calculated decision to go to the polls early because it will benefit him strategically,” Small said. So as long as the election is focused on the response to Trump tariffs, he wins as Captain Canada.

“It gives him an opportunity to control the agenda,” Small said.

“You can see there would be a temptation to get sucked into chasing headlines,” said Cristine de Clercy, an expert in the study of political leadership and the inaugural Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership at Trent University.

“In one sense it’s nothing but net for her as long as she makes some gains, gains some seats, satisfies her own internal caucus that she is representing them,” de Clercy said. Few people, even on her own team, actually expect her to unseat Ford, so “the bar for her is rather low.”

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In that sense, there is a two-election strategy at play for the Liberals: place a strong second in this one in order to win the next one.

“She took on this task with a sincere interest in rebuilding the party, and in becoming premier, I think she’s in it to win it and as long as it’s going to take her,” de Clercy said.

But competing with the NDP and reacting to Ford’s campaigning on tariff threats means Crombie is not emphasizing Ford’s record, and her prospective solutions, on three Liberal pillars: health care, education and environment.

Crombie was a popular mayor, elected three times, and she has a good idea of the voters she wants to attract, de Clercy said. There is a grit and sincerity in Crombie’s leadership. Like Ford, she has a capacity for retail politics, and even without provincial experience, her skill set is well honed for a pragmatic, personality-driven campaign style.

“It would have been nice to have some profile in the legislature,” de Clercy said. On the other hand, “it might have been a blessing to not have been in the legislature over the last year.”

Expectations are pretty low, de Clercy said, and the modern Ontario Liberal Party is in a sombre, pragmatic place, willing to follow Crombie’s lead.

Polls look like status quo, as has often been the case in recent Canadian surprise snap elections, especially the last federal one. The trouble for Crombie is that, for herself and the party, status quo would be another disaster of Del Ducan proportions.

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