A portrait of the candidate as a contender

Hanging with Chad

Chad Collins is preparing a running for mayor.

In my academic life, I do a lot of work with stats. Running regression models, testing variables against one another, etc. I used to think it was the least fun part of the process, but being able to see how the data validates or challenges a hypothesis is fascinating.

Good data shows a pattern, can be verified, and has a solid confidence factor. A finding isn’t worth anything if it isn’t statistically significant to, at minimum, the 95th percentile.

That’s why I’m confident in saying that Chad Collins is, indeed, running for mayor. There’s a slight chance he won’t, but the data says otherwise.

***

On Monday, December 9, The Spec ran a Scott Radley editorial entitled “Is Chad Collins considering a run for mayor?”

The piece starts by laying out the similarities between Collins and Bob Bratina, his predecessor as Liberal MP for Hamilton East-Stoney Creek. Both are former municipal politicians, both were known for their relative conservatism on council, and both have very publicly broken with their party in the run-up to a municipal election.

In the case of Bratina, he decided he was done with the Grits when they came to town with money for LRT. He “retired” from Parliament in 2021 and launched a half-hearted bid for mayor that saw him pad his campaign with prominent local Conservatives, stop active campaigning a few weeks before the election, earn just over 12% of the vote, and fail to submit any campaign financials, rendering him ineligible for election until 2030, at which point he would be around 86 years old. In the mean time, he’s been busy campaigning with Ned Kuruc, the Conservative Party’s candidate in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek who, theoretically, could be running against Collins.

Collins, on the other hand, has been a little more graceful about it. The policy hill on which he has decided to make his last stand is the proposed $250 “working Canadians rebate”. In this instance, he’s decided to follow the NDP’s lead and critique the policy for not including seniors and people on disability support. At the end of November, a story appeared in the Star in which Collins said he was threatened with vague “consequences” if he didn’t back the Liberals’ original motion. That created a modest stir and, on Monday, he quietly voted with the NDP on a motion that would have expanded the proposed rebate. He was the only one of his Liberal colleagues to do so.

Radley used Collins’ open rebellion to frame his piece on the “Collins for Mayor” rumour that’s circulated throughout the 71 Main West ecosystem for years.

Collins’ official comment to Radley was very standard. When asked about his mayoral aspirations, Collins replied:

Sure, Chad.

Anyone with ambition has at least started putting feelers out there for a 2026 bid. It’s a necessary first step before assembling campaign infrastructure midway through next year and making an announcement sometime between October 2025 and March 2026.

A big ol’ Spec “contender profile” from the paper’s leading political columnist is one of the most obvious ways potential candidates start putting the feelers out. This is that “data” I talked about that makes me think Collins is going to be in the running.

That’s because there’s a recent history of this sort of thing happening in Hamilton.

Dipping a toe in

Since amalgamation, Hamilton’s major mayoral contenders try to get a big Spec profile out there pre-election as part of their effort to “test the waters”.

In April 2003, after Bob Wade announced he wouldn’t seek a second term as mayor, Larry Di Ianni got an early prototype of the contender profile in the form of an Andrew Dreschel article about a “not-quite-yet-a-candidate-but-really-actually-a-candidate meet and greet” hosted at Liuna Station by Tony Battaglia of TradePort International, the company that runs Hamilton International Airport. All the city’s big business players were there - the Mancinelli’s, the Weisz’s, the De Santis’s, the Waxman’s, etc. It was a “who’s who” of local executive families. Di Ianni’s pre-campaign event was, in the words of Dreschel, “a strong signal that the business community is itching to find a candidate to get behind.”2

That article wasn’t exactly like the ones that would come in later years, as it hummed-and-hawed between profiling Di Ianni and talking up the anticipated candidacy of another ostensibly “business-friendly” candidate in the form of Ancaster Councillor Murray Ferguson. Di Ianni’s connections to the business community limited the path forward for Ferguson, and he opted to run for re-election as Ward 12 councillor instead. Two years later, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and he bowed out in 2006 in favour of his brother, Lloyd.

That was the year that Fred Eisenberger got his big contender profile. In a June column, Dreschel interviewed the former Ward 5 councillor and port authority chair who was, at the time, apparently only “considering” a bid for mayor. Dreschel’s column was upfront about what it was doing: “At this point, he’s only testing the waters, but he says he’ll make up his mind by the end of August.”3

And that he did. By the end of August, his candidacy was all-but-certain. He filed to run, took advantage of Di Ianni’s run-in with the law after violating the Municipal Elections Act, and won a squeaker of an election, earning just 452 more votes than Di Ianni and becoming the 60th mayor of Hamilton/3rd mayor of the amalgamated city.

The lead-up to the 2010 election saw the Spec awash with contender profiles. In late January, Dreschel came out with a joint profile of possible contenders Teresa Cascioli and Lloyd Ferguson. Cascioli was the city’s former Manager of Finance before entering the private sector and landing a job as President and CEO of Lakeport Brewing. After turning the company around, Cascioli sold Lakeport to Labatt, turning a very healthy profit and shifting her focus to philanthropy. Ferguson, on the other hand, had taken over from his brother as Ancaster councillor and had earned a reputation as a straight-talking right-wing fiscal hawk.

This dual contender profile was unique, as it offered a proposed timeline on their candidacy and Dreschel’s assessment of both possible candidates. “If Cascioli runs, she’ll announce in March. Ferguson figures early spring,” he wrote, phrasing it in such a way that implied that’s what both possible candidates told him. And, on their strengths, Dreschel wrote: “I don’t know how she’d do at the ballot box, but Cascioli would eat Eisenberger alive on the campaign trail. Then she’d snack on Ferguson for dessert.”4 That Cascioli didn’t live in Hamilton was not an issue for the Spec’s erstwhile city columnist. She had city hall experience and business chops, and that was good enough.

And then it all came tumbling down. On March 30, 2010, Labatt closed the Lakeport plant, firing the remaining workforce and dramatically smuggling the plant’s brewing equipment from the Burlington Street facility under the cover of darkness. Cascioli defended Labatt’s decision and her standing was irrevocably tarnished in the city, though she had already technically declined to run before the announcement was made official.5 For his part, Ferguson quietly abandoned his bid by the summer and registered to run for re-election in Ancaster.

In contrast to 2006, Eisenberger’s 2010 campaign began without any fanfare. Indeed, the announcement that he was running again came in the form of a short blurb buried on Page 5 of the Spec, noticeably smaller than the HVAC and greenhouse ads that surrounded it.6 His reputation tarnished after a contentious council term, Eisenberger wasn’t afforded the privilege of a contender profile.

A month later, Di Ianni got his comeback contender profile. Another front pager from Dreschel, the 2010 profile allowed Di Ianni space to air his grievances like it was Festivus Eve. Saying that Eisenberger had a “leadership deficit”, Di Ianni made it clear he was unsatisfied with how his successor was handling things and wanted another kick at the can.7 Di Ianni was in the race not long after his summer profile in the Spec.

As summer came to a close and the campaign began to heat up, it looked like it was another Eisenberger/Di Ianni match-up. But Dreschel dropped a bombshell on Hamilton on August 30. There, at the very top of that Monday’s edition of the Spec was an unexpected contender profile: that of the flamboyant Ward 2 councillor Bob Bratina. In his profile, he took aim at both contenders (“It would be worth running, if I lost or not, to confront Fred and Larry and the electorate with the real issues that have to be resolved…”) and at his then-council colleague Chad Collins. He raised a cavalcade of old frustrations, offered no tangible platform, and appeared to be running purely out of spite. Dreschel gave Bratina his requisite profile, but also said: “He could be Hamilton’s Rob Ford, the populist insider who comes across as an anti-establishment outsider…He can be volatile, hard-headed and thin-skinned, all at the same time.”8 Despite that characterization, Bratina entered the race and ran away with it, earning over 52,000 votes and dethroning Eisenberger.

Bratina’s tenure as mayor was controversial, to say the least. He made enemies across the city, alienated almost every member of council at some point, and made his confrontational style the standard by which city hall operated. It wasn’t a surprise, then, that, in August of 2013, we were treated to a contender profile that gave Hamilton’s progressives something to be hopeful about. This time, the subject of a Dreschel profile was none other than Ward 1 councillor Brian McHattie who, in our darkest hours, always seemed to be a reliable voice of reason.

Dreschel’s assessment of McHattie as a candidate was surprisingly soft. No reference to dangerous progressive ideas, no mention of Westdale elites, no allusions to tree hugging social justice warriors. Just a reflection on his qualifications and a comment that “McHattie would capture the centre left vote.” But the profile was punctuated throughout with references to another contender. The paper had circled back to Ancaster councillor Lloyd Ferguson again, noting that “Ferguson only admits he’s thinking about it, but the word at City Hall is that he’s virtually guaranteed to be on the mayoral ballot.”9

Not to be outdone, Eisenberger was back with another contender profile a few weeks later. In an interview with Dreschel, the once-and-future mayor said that “He thinks McHattie is further to the left than he - a former federal Conservative candidate - is.” Shots across McHattie’s bow were all the previous mayor could muster, and he told Dreschel rather bluntly that he didn’t have a platform - just a desire to get his old job back.10

By the start of 2014, it looked like it would be a contentious four-way race. Bratina, Eisenberger, Ferguson, and McHattie. Splits on the left, splits on the right, a vicious campaign for the middle. But local politics in Hamilton never ceases to surprise.

On Wednesday, February 26, 2014, council was meeting late into the night. The issue they were dealing with was contentious: a 20-year lease of the new stadium to the Hamilton Tiger Cats. Tensions ran high, everyone was exhausted, and the meeting was chalk full of theatrics and posturing by council members eager for a promotion or an easy re-election bid. Ferguson, ever the fiscal hawk, opposed the lease to the Ti Cats and, when his side lost out on a close 9 to 7 vote, he got up, visibly angry and, as he would later put it, “pumped”. He went to go talk to Ward 9 councillor Brad Clark and a member of staff. But hawk-eyed local journalist Joey Coleman was nearby and, doing his job, approached the small cluster of city hall insiders. Ferguson snapped and shoved Coleman. Not a good look for a mayoral contender aiming to oppose a mayor already famous for his outbursts.

Unlike Bratina, Ferguson admitted guilt and apologized. But the damage was done. As Dreschel wrote in his assessment of the situation, “this incident may very well place an asterisk by his name…That’s the last kind of branding any politician wants, particularly if they’re thinking of higher office. Could this be the push that shoved Ferguson’s mayoral musings permanently aside?”11 That was likely not the contender profile Ferguson wanted and he quietly withdrew his name from contention. By April, he confirmed he was not, nor would he ever, run for mayor of Hamilton.12 The musings had been pushed aside. Permanently.

And then, in a year of bombshells, one bombshell more. In early March of 2014, mere days after the “Shove Heard Around the City” and with just a few months to go until election day, Bratina announced he wouldn’t seek a second term. The shock of his departure meant that there was little time for pre-election posturing, so the Spec changed course and kicked things off with a scattering of comments from high-profile Hamiltonians. MPs, MPPs, councillors, former mayors, Cascioli, Denise Christopherson, and Laura Babcock.13 None of the people profiled gave a run much thought, but one name was conspicuously absent from speculation.

That’s probably why Brad Clark’s entry into the mayoral race surprised so many. His registration caught everyone off guard, meaning his contender profile appeared after he had submitted his paperwork. While contender profiles are intended to be an introduction to the people of Hamilton and a way to test the waters, Clark’s reordering of things came from necessity. Bratina kept his plans under wraps, purposely drawing things out to make it difficult for any of his possible successors. Clark was cool about his timing, telling Dreschel he wasn’t “unduly concerned his rush smacks of opportunism.”14

On October 27, Eisenberger pulled off a comeback and was, once again, returned to the mayor’s chair. With the new council settling in and Eisenberger back on the throne, things quieted down. After a 2016 visit to Hamilton’s Italian sister city, Racalmuto, during which Eisenberger rode a horse, sans saddle, up a flight of stairs and into the town’s church (all part of a local tradition), Dreschel suggested a 2018 re-election slogan could be “Vote for the man who can’t be thrown”.15 The horse story is an amusing anecdote, but the general sentiment was that Eisenberger would run again and that, this time, it would be smooth sailing for the incumbent.

But then, in late January of 2018, a surprise contender profile appeared in the Opinion section of the Spec. Unlike the profiles of past mayoral contenders, this one was of a relative unknown: Liberal Party backroom boy Vito Sgro. In many ways, Sgro was Bratina’s stand-in. Like Bratina, he was tethered to Ward 2 (Bratina as councillor, Sgro as resident) but was politicking out in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek and had a penchant for rebelling against the party when it was convenient. The list of things a Hamilton Liberal hates goes: Any Liberal Party organization outside of Hamilton, anyone who challenges them, and the NDP, in that order.

But Sgro had always been a quiet staffer and campaign functionary, never a front-facing member of the team. When he got his Dreschel contender profile in the Spec, Sgro was a private citizen, working as a chartered accountant. This profile was very different, but was intended to have the same impact: get Sgro’s name out there and announce to the world that he was ready to run. As he told Dreschel: “You can ask 100 people and none of them will know who I am.”16

In the end, he managed to get just over 52,000 Hamiltonians to know who he was. But it wasn’t enough to topple Eisenberger who, for the first time since 2003, became the candidate who won the mayoral race with a majority of votes cast.

In the lead-up to 2022, it looked like Clark would be back on the mayoral ballot. One got the sense that, at some point in 2021, we would get a proper contender profile of the Ward 9 councillor. But, after a secretly recorded and definitely damaging conversation between Clark and a former undercover cop-turned-police critic was leaked, he preemptively withdrew himself from consideration, leaving Dreschel’s replacement, Scott Radley, to speculate wildly without a firm name to grasp onto. Sgro, Andrea Horwath, Councillors Terry Whitehead and Jason Farr, Ted McMeekin, businessman Ron Foxcroft, and up-and-comer Keanin Loomis were all mentioned in a scattershot editorial from Radley in February of 2021.17

Loomis was the one to take the plunge, but his contender profile was noticeably different. Rather than being penned by one of the paper’s editorial columnists, his January 2022 profile was written by one of the paper’s reporters, Matthew Van Dongen. In fact, Loomis’ profile was representative of his candidacy in general. Rather than being coordinated in backrooms where insiders would put calls into their contacts at the paper who had milled around 71 Main West for years, Loomis built his campaign around being a genuine change agent, working adjacent to, but not in, city hall. He knew what changes needed to be made and knew how to make them a reality.

Contrast this approach with that of Bratina, who had an early contender profile written by Radley shortly after Loomis’ announcement. While Loomis had a polished and professional campaign ready to go, Bratina’s comments to Radley were laid-back and flippant. In a text message to the columnist, Bratina typed that he was in “no hurry at the moment to decide.”18

Horwath got her own small profile in July when she made her intention to step down as MPP crystal clear. But, with name recognition like hers, a fulsome accounting wasn’t needed. And, as we all know, on election day, she squeaked by with 41.7% to Loomis’ 40.5%.

Black and white and running all over

If someone wants to run for mayor of Hamilton, the process usually starts with reaching out to folks who have experience running campaigns, organizing, and fundraising. But an important way to signal that your intentions have moved beyond a speculative phase is through your “earned media” contender profile in the Spec. This is, more often than not, written by a Spec columnist that you or someone in your immediate campaign circle knows or has an “in” with.

This has happened reliably since 2003. That’s not to say it didn’t happen prior to then, but the “modern” contender profile really started appearing shortly after amalgamation.

Based on all that, it makes it seem all the more likely that Collins will be on the mayoral ballot in 2026. There are some noticeable differences with his recent Radley profile and those profiles of past candidates. Radley reached out to Collins because of his stance on the $250 “working Canadians rebate”. And Collins has been mentioned as a contender in almost every election cycle since 2010. So there’s no guarantee that he’s in it for sure. Yes, Liberal poll numbers are in the gutter and it seems likely that Hamilton East-Stoney Creek will switch to the Tories in 2025, but, after the events south of the border, there’s the possibility that things will turn around dramatically in a short while. It’s a slim possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.

Still, the moment might be perfect for a right-leaning populist Liberal like Collins to swoop into city hall. Whether or not a Collins mayoral campaign would be helped or hindered by a collection of vocal right-wingers, eager to tap into the simmering anger in the population, running haphazardly for council (half based on rumour, half spitballing, but: Sgro in Ward 2, Dyakowski in Ward 3, reliable Hamilton Mountain Tories/“Concerned Hamiltonians” in Wards 7 and 8, a collection of vote-splitting angry right-wingers in Wards 12, 13, and 15), remains to be seen.

Collins’ contender profile in the Spec is just the opening salvo in what could be a long, grueling mayoral campaign. He could decide against it if the reception to his profile is muted. He could be offered a better gig somewhere else. He could recalibrate if other high profile candidates step in. There are still a lot of unknowns. We don’t know what Mayor Horwath will do. Now that Eisenberger has soured on her leadership, does he want a fourth kick at the can? Could all the posturing by John-Paul Danko be paving the way for a run? More on the Danko’s in a minute, though.

With 683 days to go, anything’s possible. But, if the Collins piece in the Spec was an early contender profile, we’re in for an interesting ride.

The ol’ switcheroo

So it has finally happened. The great inevitability, the most open of all the secrets, what was always going to be has finally come to pass. The Hamilton Mountain Ontario Liberals have their candidate. And that candidate is a Danko.

The twist, though, is that it isn’t the one you’d expect.

On December 10, the OLP announced that a Danko - Ward 7 Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) trustee Dawn Danko, to be precise - has been acclaimed as their candidate on Hamilton Mountain for what will almost certainly be a spring provincial election. The formerly announced candidate for the OLP nomination on Hamilton Mountain, Heino Døssing, quickly shifted gears and announced he would be seeking the OLP nomination in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek instead.

The expectation was that Dawn’s husband, Ward 8 councillor John-Paul Danko, would be the OLP nominee on Hamilton Mountain. Councillor Danko has been rattling cages and kicking up mud for years, doing his damnedest to get his name out there and position himself as the Grit heir apparent atop the mountain. His eclectic ideological brand - what I call “right-leaning populist classical liberalism with a light misting of urbanism” - saw him go from being adored by progressives and despised by conservatives to being despised by progressives and…well…still despised by conservatives. Not that it really matters, since being despised by multiple groups isn’t a hinderance to being elected in this town. Name recognition is a hell of a drug.

His recent crusade against evidence-based health policies and encampments included language that took aim at Doug Ford and seemed to be aligned with the new right-wing tack taken by the OLP under Bonnie Crombie. The best anyone could have guessed was that he was mere moments away from announcing his candidacy.

But, politics in Hamilton really can be a cloak-and-dagger kind of game. More like Clue than anything. And not even the movie. Like, Clue the board game.

Trustee Danko’s candidacy was, apparently, a closely guarded secret. In contrast to Danko, Døssing was an active candidate; after a long period of dedicated service to the Hamilton Mountain OLP riding association, he announced his candidacy back in April and has been doing the requisite tour of local events and functions to get his name out there.

When Crombie blew into town for a big-ticket fundraiser at Michelangelo’s in November, Døssing was there, along with other high-profile local Liberals including Chad Collins and Larry Di Ianni. Neither Danko was anywhere to be seen.

And yet, out the blue (red?), the provincial Liberals have acclaimed Trustee Danko as their candidate, presumably sidestepping the OLP organization on the ground and pushing Døssing out to Hamilton East-Stoney Creek.

***

While it is true that every party suffers from authoritarian tendencies up at the top and furious meddling by local party elites in the middle, the Liberals have been particularly heavy-handed in this regard over the past while.

In the lead-up to the 2022 provincial election, a name bandied about for the Hamilton East-Stoney Creek OLP nomination was local political wunderkind Cam Galindo. Despite his youth, Galindo had risen quickly in local politics, taking down former NDP MP and trustee Wayne Marston for the Wards 9 & 10 HWDSB trustee seat in 2018. With incumbent NDP MPP Paul Miller vulnerable (because of his controversial spouse in the form of Ward 5 HWDSB trustee Carole Paikin Miller, his confrontational style of politics, and his lingering conservatism), Galindo was seen as a bright light for the east-end Liberals. With him on the ticket, they could actually envision recapturing a seat that, in an earlier form, was held by another Liberal wunderkind - Dominic Agostino.

And then Ward 2 councillor Jason Farr swooped in. It is difficult to determine if someone suggested (subtly or otherwise) that Galindo switch over to Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas or if he heard Farr was guaranteed the OLP nomination in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek. Either way, Galindo announced his candidacy in HWAD, was told they already had a pool of candidates seeking the nomination, withdrew his name from contention within 24 hours and, mere weeks later, announced his retirement from active politics at age 26. The whole torrid affair represented a baffling squandering of talent. Galindo seems much happier out of local politics now and I’m happy for him, but he could have gone far politically had it not been for the machinations of some entrenched Liberal elites who have little-to-no real political acumen.

With a strategy like that - one that puts ambitious and talented aspiring candidates through a meat grinder to clear the way for people with a name who haven’t done work to build infrastructure on the ground - it’s no wonder that the last time the Liberals won a seat in the Hamilton area was 2014. That was on the strength of the McMeekin machine out in Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale. And that machine was efficiently and skillfully dismantled by Sandy Shaw and the ONDP in 2018 (who was, herself, very deservedly nominated for re-election recently). In the past two elections, the OLP hasn’t managed to earn more than 11,000 votes in any Hamilton-area riding, which is literally thousands of votes behind each riding’s winner.

***

There’s one more thing about Trustee Danko’s candidacy that’s interesting.

In the OLP press release announcing her coronation, the party included a quote from Trustee Danko for use by the media. It included much of what you’d expect - work as a trustee, experience as a parent, focus on education - but it also read like many of the statements being made by Councillor Danko around the council horseshoe.

There was a nod toward concerns about “safety”, but the real kicker is the middle portion of the quote:

Extreme interests. Hmm. Fascinating.

The most recent campaigns by the ONDP include one to strengthen small businesses and expand employee ownership (supported by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce), subsidize home heating for seniors and people in need, launch a public inquiry on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, tackle gender-based violence in postsecondary institutions, and fight landlord influencers who post viral content showcasing their tips and tricks for evicting seniors from rental housing (this one was spearheaded by Shaw). And those are just the things the ONDP has done in the past two weeks.

So these are the extreme interests Trustee Danko is talking about? Small businesses and seniors on fixed incomes and transit users? The vulnerable seniors being literally pushed around by landlord influencers are “extreme interests”?

I’m sure the statement was workshopped by the kids-in-short-pants at OLP HQ, but there’s something about that statement that’s just so…quintessentially Danko.

The Danko brand of politics is wildly confrontational. Rather than recognize the nuance in our democracy, they gleefully point to everyone slightly to the left or right of the position they’ve taken as a dangerous extremist determined to destroy everything you love. It’s the politics of division, pure and simple.

Councillor Danko has spent the past while tweeting (to the right-wing mobs over on X/Twitter) about “#HamOnt anti-police advocates and their Council & Police Board allies”, “encampment supporters” and their “strangle hold” on Hamilton, and “the Canadian far left - who emulate US extremists and import their tactics to Canada.” His approach on council has been to look at anything coming from Cameron Kroetsch with an intense level of skepticism rarely applied to any of his other colleagues, and that goes beyond just subtweeting him like it’s still 2011.

It isn’t just his council colleagues either. Unprompted, Councillor Danko took time to scold Ward 2 HWDSB trustee Sabreina Dahab on November 12 for posting about the death of Erixon Kabera, who was shot by officers with the Hamilton Police Service earlier that month. Set aside how bad a look it is for a middle aged straight white dude to lecture a young woman of colour who also happens to be a colleague of his wife’s, he helped direct more harmful focus on someone who is a frequent target of far-right hate. Because of what X/Twitter has become, the replies to his tweet are filled with racist garbage from racist sock puppets and bots. And I’m not being hyperbolic. Some of the posts are just straight up anti-Black memes, so be careful when looking at the replies to his post.

To her credit, Hamilton Centre MPP Sarah Jama took Danko to task for this post, imploring him to stop and think about the situation. “Rather than using this moment to go after Sabreina yet again, can you slow down and wonder how this makes Black people in Hamilton feel right now (including Sabreina)?” Jama tweeted.

Danko did not respond to Jama’s post.

***

This is a crisis moment in our democracy. The temperature is high - too high to sustain healthy dialogue. So high, in fact, that we may lose our democracy altogether if we don’t bring the heat down. Decent politicians are quitting in droves, leaving only genuine extremists in positions of power. Regular people are tuning out and losing faith in the system. Things are bad and we desperately need people to turn the heat down.

In spite of all this, the Danko’s seem content to keep cranking that dial higher and higher.

There’s a certain kind of privilege in being able to do that. There are a great many politicians who have to moderate their tone or their presentation or their positions to be taken seriously by a skeptical public. There’s a reason why some of the most vile and hateful rhetoric is saved for the council grouping I call “The Ladies and the Gays (plus Craig)™” - because they have the audacity to be different and ask difficult questions.

By putting that comment in her initial press release, Trustee Danko is signaling what kind of MPP campaign she’ll run. She could be doing so to get ahead of whomever the ONDP nominates to replace Monique Taylor, who is shifting to federal politics (some possible names I’ve heard are 2022 Ward 6 candidate Chris Slye, past school trustee candidate and local activist Marlon Picken, and McMaster’s Acting Senior Manager of Community Engagement, Kojo Damptey). But, realistically, Trustee Danko is playing the same political game as Councillor Danko: frame everyone other than yourself as a dangerous extremist.

While it might be on-brand for a rebranded right-wing provincial Liberal Party run by cynical insiders, the voters of Hamilton Mountain will have to ask themselves if they really want to reward someone who so enthusiastically plays the politics of division to get ahead.

In these dangerous times, why elect someone who revels in the chaos?

A coalition of convenience

We’re headed for a provincial election in the spring. And, if the polls are right, the Ford Tories will earn another legislative supermajority.

So, naturally, everyone who got a B+ in Grade 10 Civics is suggesting that the Liberals, NDP, and Greens form a coalition to defeat him.

There are a few reasons why this constant refrain is maddening. The first is: That’s not how anything works.

Yes, on raw numbers, if the NDP, Liberals, and Greens formed a coalition in 2018 and every single voter who cast ballots for each of the composite parties voted reliably for the Coalition, the Tories would have 38 seats and the Coalition would have 86 seats.

But that’s a naïve way of looking at politics from folks who have rarely seen the inside of a campaign. While there’s plenty of overlap between the NDP and Greens, there are many Liberal voters who see the NDP as too extreme and many NDP voters who see the Liberals as Tories with different branding.

By blowing up the traditional party system, you’d be funneling some votes to the new Coalition, but there would absolutely be a breakaway left-wing group that would siphon votes off and a sizable chunk of the Liberals who would vote Tory instead. That could create a situation where the Ontario PC Party wins even more seats and shreds each composite party’s infrastructure to the point of incapacitation.

This isn’t the Ontario of the 1980’s when the provincial Liberals were actually progressive. Prior to the provincial election of 1987, the provincial Liberals (governing in a coalition with the NDP) actually had some solid ideas. They were helped by the comparative progressiveness of the Tories at the time, who were very much in their “Red Tory” phase. Kathleen Wynne brought that back in the early 2010’s but then squandered that with the disastrous campaign of 2018. Today’s Liberals are a centre-right party, so assuming NDP voters would enthusiastically support a Liberal Party that is barely different than Doug Ford’s Tories is naïve at best and malicious at worst.

Second, the goal should be to pursue meaningful electoral reform and quickly. That means making a pledge to change our voting system front-and-centre of the next campaign with a commitment to abide by that pledge. Not much more I can say about that. Electoral reform is a passion of mine, so I’ll let my previous statements stand for themselves.

Third, the problem isn’t that “progressive” voters are divided. It’s that each of the major parties hasn’t given progressives a real reason to back them. As I keep saying the Liberals have become a less popular version of the PCs, so it’s up to the NDP to run a campaign of relentless optimism. It isn’t enough to say “we’re not Doug Ford”. And, luckily, the party has chosen “It’s Marit” as their slogan. Now all they need to do is become the happy warriors I know they can be and give us meaty, tangible things to get excited about.

Part of that will require a media strategy that breaks Doug Ford’s stranglehold on his province’s attention. Part of it means cooperating with the Greens.

I know it sounds like I’m contradicting myself here, but a tacit agreement between the Ontario NDP and Green Party could free up much-needed resources and create opportunities to coordinate on specific goals. While my opinion on a Coalition is a little “doom and gloom”, I can say one thing definitively: had the ONDP not run a candidate in Perry Sound-Muskoka in 2022, there’d be one less Tory in the legislature. The Liberals turfed their candidate and the Green surge there was only stopped by the 3,427 votes the NDP candidate took. If it was a Tory/Green match-up, Matt Richter would have almost certainly been in the legislature right now. And that’s one more progressive vote against a right-wing government.

Coordination would require movement on some policy positions. The Greens would have to be more pro-union and the NDP would have to shift on things like mining and manufacturing, but there are absolutely ways that can be done.

Regardless, don’t listen to anyone saying the “progressive” vote is split by the Liberals and NDP running against one another. Under Crombie’s leadership, the Liberals have never been further from the NDP. Under Stiles’ leadership, the NDP has never had a better chance to take power. With a little tone shift and some creative campaigning, it’s possible to defeat Doug Ford. But wasting our time talking about provincial politics like it’s still the 1980’s isn’t helpful.

Cool facts for cool people

• Doug Ford’s anti-homeless legislation dropped today. It’s about as draconian and ineffective as you’d expect. Fines of up to $10,000 or up to six months in prison for public drug use (wouldn’t it be great if people had supervised sites where they could use drugs and get addictions support resources? Oh, wait…), amendments to the Trespass to Property Act to include parks and vacant land, more bureaucratic loopholes for outreach workers to jump through, and a piddly little $75.5 million toward homelessness supports. Hamilton alone spends $119 million on housing and homelessness supports, to spreading $75.5 million across 444 municipalities is like spitting on someone dying of thirst in the desert. As is always the case with the Ford government, it’s not enough funding for what works and more emphasis on what doesn’t work. Love it.