How to Take Down Doug Ford
The Coming Election
All signs point to Ontario entering a provincial election sometime in the next year. Premier Doug Ford recently ruled out an election this fall. But he’s hinted he’s considering pulling the plug on his own super-majority government once the calendar turns over.
It’s anyone’s guess when that will be. The biggest hurdle Ford should face is his record of deep cuts finally catching up with him. But his opponents have failed to create a compelling narrative explaining just how damaging his reign has been to the province. Without this, he continues to coast on his aw-shucks charm. If the polls are correct, he will easily win re-election.
He’s also counting on an energized PC base and general voter apathy to get away with calling an early election, even as it costs taxpayers $150 million to carry out. It’s worked for him before. In 2022, he won seven more seats than he did in 2018. But he won them with over 400,000 fewer votes cast for his party than in the previous election. Low turnout worked in his favour.
People simply weren’t motivated to vote. The media, which had energetically covered the early cuts of his premiership, stopped covering the stakes of Ford’s decisions about a year before the last election. Instead of reminding voters about Ford’s record in office, they wrote endless articles about his dominance in the polls. To many voters, the election was a foregone conclusion. If Ford would inevitably win, why bother voting?
I’ve long called Ford the ‘Teflon Premier’ since nothing seems to stick to him. During the 2022 election, a member of the Ontario Liberal Party’s campaign leadership team actually told me Ford was too popular to attack. The party would be holding its fire. The attacks eventually came in the final days of the campaign. But it was too little, too late.
If history is not to repeat itself once again, the opposition parties have to make the election a referendum on Ford, his cuts, his corruption, and his hugely expensive inability to ever get any decision right on the first, second, or third try. To do that, his opponents must use his negatives to bring down his positives.
Attacking Doug’s Strengths
Most people think defeating an opponent is all about amplifying their negatives. But it’s just as important to chip away at what people like about a candidate. That’s because voters understand no one is perfect and tend to weigh the good against the bad before coming to a final verdict.
Last month, polling firm Abacus Data surveyed over 1,000 Ontario voters about Ontario politics. The most interesting piece of data, at least to me, was collected on a question about how voters would describe Doug Ford.
As much as opposition parties have tried to paint Doug Ford as cruel and uncaring because of the deep cuts he’s made while in office, voters largely still see him as a friendly figure. Despite his many policy reversals while in office, almost the same share of voters see Ford as a decisive politician as those who see him as a waffler. The same goes for his willingness to apologize when he makes a mistake.
Ford’s negatives shoot up when it comes to how in touch he is with voters' concerns, how reckless he is with taxpayer dollars, how dishonest he is, and how corrupt he is. His negatives are easy targets for opposition parties when it comes to crafting their election attacks on Ford. But they will be more successful if they combine them with the characteristics people already dislike about him.
Reframing Ford
Here are some ways the opposition parties can use Ford’s top weaknesses to reframe and undercut his top strengths.
Gets Things Done + Reckless with Taxpayer Money
Voters like that Ford gets things done but they don’t like how reckless he can be with taxpayer dollars. There are very few policy decisions Ford has taken that he hasn’t then reversed himself on shortly after. Usually, these reversals come with a giant price tag for taxpayers.
If the opposition parties are smart, they’ll tie these two things together. This will remind voters that there is a steep cost every time Ford acts too quickly and that it’s taxpayers who are on the hook to pay for his mistakes. Key issues to deploy this pairing on include alcohol liberalization, scrapping and restoring green energy projects, and the opening up and closing back down of Greenbelt land for development.
Admits Mistakes and Corrects Them + Out of Touch
Many voters see Ford’s willingness to apologize for his many mistakes as a positive. It shows he’s listening. He’s even made this argument himself. But if he were really listening to voters, he wouldn’t make so many mistakes in the first place. His constant apologies are really a sign that he’s out of touch with the needs of voters and incapable of meeting them — sometimes even on the second and third try.
After six years in office, Ford has racked up a lot of policy reversals and apologies. The opposition parties would have a lot to work with if they framed these failures as Ford’s inability to grow and improve as a premier— an inability that is almost certainly guaranteed to continue if he's rewarded with yet another term. He’s had time to grow into the job. But he hasn’t.
One of the major areas the opposition parties can go after is the Greenbelt scandal. Ford first shopped the idea of opening up Greenbelt land to developers in a closed-door meeting during the 2018 election. He got caught, said he wouldn’t touch the land, and then reversed himself as soon as he won power. When voters once again spoke out, he apologized and reversed himself again.
Friendly + Dishonest
Ford is a folksy guy who regularly gives out his cell phone number. People read this as friendly. But after six years of being caught in various lies about his government’s rampant corruption, voters also see him as a dishonest politician. At the end of the day, there’s nothing friendly about a guy who smiles even as he tells you a lie. There’s a reason they call it ‘lying through your teeth.’
The opposition parties should highlight how his many policy reversals are not examples of him innocently trying his best while getting decisions wrong but of him getting caught while purposely doing wrong. They should make him wear the saying, ‘he’s not sorry for what he did; he’s just sorry he got caught.’ By tying every smile Ford flashes to every lie he tries to sell, the opposition parties can make voters begin to doubt whether he ever had their best interests at heart.
An area the opposition parties should jump on is the selling off of our provincial healthcare system. Ford famously said, “As long as our government is here, no one will have to pay with their credit card, they’ll be paying with their OHIP card.” And yet we know he is paying for-profit clinics more money than hospitals to carry out surgical procedures even as those for-profit clinics charge patients extra out-of-pocket fees for procedures that should be covered by OHIP.
Normal + Corrupt
Ford’s biggest negative is corruption. Even among PC supporters, only a small majority believe he is more ethical than corrupt. So far, he has gotten away with this largely because voters believe all politicians are corrupt to some degree. And if that is the case, they prefer to back a politician that they believe is using that corruption to deliver for them.
But time and time again, we see that Ford’s corruption benefits his donors and pals instead of the average Ontario family. Under Ford, it’s no longer corruption-as-usual. Under Ford, anything and everything is for sale to the highest bidder, whether it’s protected Greenbelt lands, Long-Term Care facilities, Ontario Place, or the Science Centre.
The opposition parties could use Ford’s record-setting corruption to paint a picture of the new normal under Doug Ford and how it looks nothing like the Ontario voters remember — or voted for in the last two elections.
One of the best weapons the opposition parties have as they make this argument is the share of Ontarians who are aware of the Greenbelt scandal. It’s rare that a scandal penetrates so deeply into the awareness of voters. A full 82% of voters are aware of the scandal and 58% of them say it makes them less likely to support Ford in the next election. No wonder he’s in a rush to get it scheduled before the RCMP concludes its investigation into his government.
Almost 1 in 4 of Ford’s own supporters also say they are less likely to vote for him because of his party’s actions related to the Greenbelt scandal. With an RCMP investigation still hanging over Ford’s head, the opposition parties should do all they can to keep this story on the front page of the newspapers and plastered across social media.
Whenever it takes place, the next election will be an uphill battle for the opposition parties and the progressive voters who support them. But Doug Ford is not unbeatable. He has weaknesses just like any other politician and there are vulnerabilities to his strengths that are ripe for exploiting. But for that work to be successful, his opponents must start now.
Theresa has served as the Communications Coordinator for the Ontario Liberal Party, the VP of Communications for the Ontario Women’s Liberal Commission, the Director of Communications to Ontario Deputy Premier Deb Matthews, and an election speechwriter for former Premier Kathleen Wynne. As a member of ‘Team Neutral’, she helped manage the 2013 and 2020 OLP Leadership races.
