rfmcdonald | [LINK] "Electing Mike Harris" (Reply)

Twenty years ago yesterday, Mike Harris led the Progressive Conservatives to victory in the 1995 provincial elections. Toronto's Jamie Bradburn explains what happened.

When the writ dropped on April 28, 1995, it was clear that premier Bob Rae’s NDP government was toast. Since its election in 1990, it had endured a recession, the hostility of the business community and press, and its own financial blunders in raising the provincial deficit. The implementation of the “Social Contract” of public-service wage cuts, and the ensuing “Rae Days,” alienated traditional NDP supporters among public sector and labour unions. While Rae himself maintained some respect among the public, his government sank to the bottom of Lake Ontario in opinion polls. The NDP issued few promises during the 1995 campaign, preferring to stand on their record and reputation as a party with a conscience.

As the six-week campaign began, Lyn McLeod’s Liberals were polling at over 50 per cent popularity. The mood soured quickly as McLeod avoided answering any question clearly. As the party leader with the lowest public profile, she barely mingled with the public. As Sun columnist Douglas Fisher pointed out, there may have been an unspoken feeling that voters “simply do not want a woman as premier or prime minister,” regardless of which party they belonged to. “Surely someday this largely unexpressed block or rejection will disappear,” Fisher observed. “But it’s still with us, and one gets the same hesitations and then the faint but clear damning of Lyn McLeod that I’ve heard before regarding Audrey McLaughlin and Kim Campbell, and even back to Sheila Copps and Flora MacDonald when they were would-be leaders of their parties.” Two more decades would pass before Ontarians elected Kathleen Wynne as the province’s first female premier.

But the biggest mistake the Liberals made was making the NDP their main target. It was an easy error to make. The aggressive nature of the Tory platform violated former premier William Davis’s dictum that the key to political success in Ontario was that “bland works.” Good, upstanding Ontarians would never fall prey to the upending of government services and divisive proposals for programs like “workfare,” right?

Yet something was happening to reignite the Tories. When the party collapsed in the late 1980s, much of the old backroom guard moved into the private sector or entered the federal arena. What remained was a membership who hated each other’s guts—as party official Tom Long put it, “they were mindlessly vindictive and spiteful.” In the legislature, Andy Brandt served as “interim leader” for three years. The power vacuum left room for the party to be reshaped by younger radicals who felt the Tories had drifted too far left. Drawing inspiration from neo-conservative movements in Great Britain and the United States, figures like Long, Alister Campbell, Tony Clement, and Leslie Noble gained control of party mechanisms. Harris’s natural conservative inclinations served this group well when he became Tory leader in 1990.