Do endorsements even matter?
The Ontario Liberal leadership hopefuls are collecting endorsements as they head towards the candidate deadline. But do they even matter?
Now that most of the expected Ontario Liberal leadership hopefuls have officially launched their campaigns, conversations about the race are moving on from who will enter to who has momentum. Momentum can be demonstrated in several ways.
The teams are, of course, raising money for what will be a marathon months-long campaign. Navdeep Bains’ campaign announced in his first week as an official candidate that he had already raised enough money to pay the entire $150,000 contestant fee. Days later, Lee Fairclough’s team announced in an email that they had done the same. Then Steve Paikin reported that Dylan Marando had raised $100,000. Eric Lombardi followed with an announcement that his team had reached the $100,000 mark. That leaves just Rob Cerjanec to publicize his fundraising.
The candidates are also working every room they enter to sway new and old members alike to their side before the September membership deadline. If you check out their social feeds, you’ll see them crisscrossing the province speaking to as many Liberals as possible, both at riding association-hosted events and on their own tours.
They are also working to collect endorsements from party insiders to demonstrate their organizational strength and narrative sway over the party’s leadership and rank-and-file. That’s what I want to focus on today. While the value of memberships and donations is quantifiable in a leadership race, endorsements play a much murkier role in the final result. Who, if anyone, is swayed by an endorsement and why?
Endorsements and Super Delegates
Political parties are democratic bodies that elect representatives from within their membership to serve as party leaders, local candidates, officers on the party executive, officers on local association executive committees, officers of party commissions, and members of party committees.
In the old days, when parties held delegated conventions to choose their leaders, many of these figures had “ex officio” status and were allowed to attend and vote at a convention without having to stand for election as a delegate from their local association.
Therefore, whichever leadership candidate was able to round up the largest number of these super-delegates had a built-in mathematical advantage on the convention floor, while still having the ability to have his or her supporters stand for the remaining elected spots.
The Ontario Liberals finally ditched delegated leadership conventions altogether ahead of the last leadership race through a constitutional change made in 2023. The upcoming race will be only the second in the party’s history in which all members are entitled to a direct say in who becomes leader.
The Potential Endorsing Field
While holding a title within the party no longer carries the same constitutional weight, many of these titles still carry some social cachet with the broader membership. The prestige associated with an endorsement in a leadership race is directly related to the role's seniority.
Party Leader
It doesn’t get more senior than this, though there are two tiers to this category: those who have gone on to become premier and those who have not. There are three living former Liberal premiers in Ontario and two other living former party leaders (excluding interim leaders). None have endorsed a subsequent leadership candidate before.
Cabinet and Caucus
Cabinet endorsers can be broken down into former deputy premiers, senior cabinet members, and other cabinet members. The caucus can be divided into current and past members. In both cases, recency of office tends to increase the importance of the endorsement.
Party Presidents
I tend to believe that party presidents hold more sway than losing candidates when it comes to endorsements, simply because there are far fewer of them. A party currently fields 124 candidates in each provincial election, but can be led by the same president for years. It’s helpful for the organization that the sitting president remains neutral, but past presidents can and often do weigh in on internal party races.
Candidates
Past candidates can be divided into immediate past candidates (the last candidate to run in a riding) and those who ran less recently. While recency matters, an endorsement from a beloved and/or still-very-involved former candidate can matter just as much.
Commission Presidents
Commission Presidents are not required to be neutral and sometimes make endorsements during leadership races. In theory, such an endorsement is made individually but strongly implies support from an entire wing of the movement for a specific candidate.
Riding Presidents
Riding presidents can be divided into current, immediate-past, and past presidents. The more recent the service, the better. I consider these endorsements higher-profile than those from party or commission officers, as a president is more closely tied to a specific community. Since the leadership vote is weighted by riding, these endorsements can be important in swaying local voters.
Council, Commission, and Committee Members
Other elected or appointed roles within the Executive Council, party commissions, or committees are relevant in that order. However, there is power in numbers, and a unanimous endorsement from a party body carries more weight. The executive of the Ontario Young Liberals, for example, chose to endorse a leadership candidate in 2020.
External Endorsements
Beyond party organizers, endorsements from high-profile community members, community organizations, and third-party organizations such as unions can also make a difference.
The Endorsements So Far
The timing of endorsements is all about generating momentum throughout the race, especially at the start and end. It’s standard practice to lead with some heavy hitters but hold back some of the most high-profile endorsements to deploy strategically near the end of the campaign.
So far, most candidate endorsements have appeared in media reports or in initial organizing committee announcements listing who is organizing for each candidate. Here’s where each of the registered candidates stands (in alphabetical order):
Navdeep Bains
Yasir Naqvi, current MP for Ottawa Centre, former MPP for Ottawa Centre (2007-2018), former cabinet minister, past leadership candidate, and former OLP President
Iqwinder Gaheer, current MP for Mississauga—Malton
Arielle Kayabaga, current MP for London West
Brad Duguid, former MPP for Scarborough Centre (2003-2018) and former cabinet minister
Siloni Waraich, former OLP President
Tyler Banham, former LPC(O) President
Rob Cerjanec
Stephanie Bowman, current MPP for Don Valley West
Granville Anderson, former MPP for Durham (2014-2018)
Elinor Caplan, former MPP for Oriole (1985-1997), former cabinet minister, and former MP for Thornhill (1997-2004)
Marie Bountrogianni, former MPP for Hamilton Mountain (1999-2007) and former cabinet minister
Jerry S. Grafstein, former Ontario Senator
Trevor Stewart, Clarence-Rockland councillor and past candidate
Larry Di Ianni, former Mayor of Hamilton and past LPC Candidate
Ted Crysler, Rural and Northern Commission EVP and past candidate
Jason Cherniak, past candidate
Roger Gordon, past candidate
Leticia Castro, Western University OYL President
Rhys Matthew, former VP-Provincial University of Ottawa OYL
Raheem White, Mississauga-Malton OYL President
Saniyah Abbas, Oshawa OYL President
Lee Fairclough
Ted Hsu, current MPP for Kingston and the Islands, former MP for Kingston and the Islands (2011-2015), and past leadership candidate
Lucille Collard, current MPP for Ottawa—Vanier
Stephanie Smyth, current MPP for Toronto—St. Paul’s
Deb Matthews, former MPP for London North Centre (2003–2018), former Deputy Premier, former cabinet minister, former OLP President, and former OLP Campaign Co-Chair
Carol Mitchell, former MPP for Huron—Bruce (2003-2011), and former cabinet minister
Murray Elston, former MPP for Huron—Bruce (1981–1994), former cabinet minister, past interim leader, and past leadership candidate
Marie Charette-Poulin, former Ontario Senator (1995-2015), former Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet at the Privy Council Office, and former LPC President
Alison Gohel, former OLP candidate
Sheila Gervais, former LPC National Director
Luke Calabretta, OLP Regional Coordinator for Etobicoke/Downtown/East York
Eric Lombardi
NA (Eric told me to tell readers to “stay tuned”)
Dylan Marando
Chris Ballard, former MPP for Newmarket-Aurora (2014-2018), former cabinet minister, and former councillor in the Town of Aurora (2010-2014)
Adam Vaughan, former MP for Trinity-Spadina and Spadina-Fort York (2014-2021), and former councillor in the City of Toronto (2006-2014)
The Caucus Factor
There will be plenty of endorsements to come over the remaining five or so months left in this race. But the ones I find most important out of the gate are those from the current OLP Caucus.
The small size of the caucus makes each caucus member's support count for more than usual. The fact that each member of the caucus has also survived the PC juggernaut without robust central campaign backing is a pretty good endorsement of their understanding of what the electorate is looking for from the Liberal Party.
There are 14 members in the current Ontario Liberal Caucus: two are running as candidates, and a third is serving as interim leader and will remain neutral in the leadership race. That leaves endorsements from 11 other caucus members up for grabs. Fairclough leads the way with three endorsements (about one-third of the available caucus endorsements), while Cerjanec has one. No other candidate has attracted an Ontario Liberal caucus member's endorsement.
The Liberal Party of Canada Caucus is also relevant, especially as its members bask in the glow of the prolonged Carney honeymoon. It boasts 70 elected MPs from Ontario, including the Prime Minister and potential leadership candidate Nate Erskine-Smith. Former OLP leadership candidate Yasir Naqvi also currently serves in the federal caucus.
Including Yasir, six Ontario Liberal MPs are former Ontario Liberal MPPs. That dual service would likely increase the value of their endorsements, though only Naqvi has weighed in to date. At least two other Ontario Liberal MPs are former Liberal Queen’s Park staffers and may end up endorsing a candidate in the weeks ahead.
Of the federal caucus, three members are backing Bains: Yasir Naqvi, Iqwinder Gaheer, and Arielle Kayabaga. That leaves a massive number of high-profile endorsers still on the table for the leadership candidates. Naqvi is a particularly important endorsement, given his deep ties to the party's organizational muscle as a former party president, as well as his high profile with Liberal voters as a former cabinet minister and past leadership candidate.
Past MPPs and Past Ontario MPs
Support from past MPPs and Ontario MPs is also relevant in the race. There are hundreds of them out there, including those who served in previous Ontario Liberal governments under Premiers Peterson, McGuinty, and Wynne, and previous Liberal governments federally, under Prime Ministers Trudeau, Turner, Chretien, Martin, and Trudeau.
Each endorsement from this large group speaks to the size and depth of a candidate’s Liberal network and acts as a nod to those who built the party before them. Both of these factors tend to be important to long-time party members.
Brad Duguid, who has endorsed Bains, was the happy warrior of the McGuinty-Wynne Liberals and deeply well-liked by staff and party supporters. He was a city Councillor in Scarborough before becoming a Liberal MPP and cabinet minister. In government, he held eight cabinet positions and retired before the 2018 campaign.
Elinor Caplan, who has endorsed Cerjanec, was a municipal politician before becoming a senior cabinet minister in the Peterson government. She went on to serve as a federal MP and cabinet minister in the Chrétien government. Led by Elinor, the Caplan family has had a huge impact on Canadian politics over the last forty or so years, with Elinor’s son David serving as a very popular MPP and cabinet minister in the McGuinty era.
Marie Bountrogianni, who has also endorsed Cerjanec, is a former MPP and cabinet minister who held three different portfolios in the McGuinty government and introduced and passed the historic Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). Since leaving politics, she has served both as the President of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and as the Dean of the Chang School of Continuing Education.
Outside of the premiers’ circle, Deb Matthews is perhaps one of the most well-known and beloved Ontario Liberals in the province (and I’m not just saying that because she used to be my boss). She was an organizer in the Peterson days (he’s her brother-in-law), a party president and senior minister in the McGuinty days, and the deputy premier and campaign co-chair in the Wynne years.
Carol Mitchell has long been one of the most trusted voices in the party within rural Ontario. She is a previous Warden of Huron County, a former Caucus Chair, and was a formidable Minister of Agriculture before OLP’s slide in rural Ontario in 2011.
Murray Elston’s years of service may stretch further back, but they are also impressive. He served as an MPP for 13 years and as the Minister of Health, Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet, and Minister of Financial Institutions in the Peterson government. When the party lost government, he took on the role of Interim Leader and eventually ran for the top job as a leadership candidate.
Chris Ballard served as a councillor in the town of Aurora before flipping the riding of Newmarket-Aurora in 2014. He became the Minister of Housing and Poverty Reduction before being tapped as the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. (He’s also my former boss.)
Like Ballard, Adam Vaughan started out in municipal politics, serving as a councillor in the City of Toronto for eight years before moving on to federal politics as an MP and serving as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. Part of Vaughan’s work in this role focused on the housing file.
The Former Premiers
One subgroup of the Liberal Caucus family unlikely to weigh in on the race is the elite and tiny club of former Ontario Liberal premiers.
Premier McGuinty rarely gets involved in partisan politics, with the exception of backing the election of MPP John Fraser, his former constituency staffer.
Premier Peterson takes a similar stance, though he did endorse a presidential candidate at the 2012 LPC Biennial in Ottawa.
Premier Wynne has kept a low profile in internal Liberal contests since leaving the Premier’s Office. However, she is an organizer at heart and got involved in a recent municipal by-election for a Toronto council seat. If she backs a candidate, it will likely take the form of behind-the-scenes support rather than a public endorsement.
Will It Matter?
This head-counting exercise inevitably brings us back to the question of whether any of it matters. As with the debate over whether lawn signs matter, the data is mixed, as are the opinions on the topic. It is also almost never the case that an endorsement is the deciding factor for a voter in ranking a candidate number one on their ballot. But it can create a permission structure for others to give a candidate a second look.
In 2013, Kathleen Wynne trailed Sandra Pupatello but was able to out-organize the frontrunner and draw nearly equal on the first ballot. Once she did, Eric Hoskins, who had dropped off the ballot after the first round, made his way over to Wynne’s camp. He was later followed by Charles Sousa and Gerard Kennedy, along with most of their supporters, putting Wynne over the top on the third and final ballot, making her the new leader of the party and the 25th Premier of Ontario.
While each of those endorsements was important, what happened behind the scenes that sparked them was even more important. Long-time cabinet minister and former party president Greg Sorbara, who had decided to remain neutral and had not endorsed a candidate in the race, saw the deadlocked first ballot and marched over to the Hoskins camp to speak with the candidate as he fell off the ballot. That discussion sparked Hoskins’ dramatic walk across the floor at Maple Leaf Gardens, where he originally headed in the direction of Pupatello’s team, then pivoted to Wynne’s supporter section. It was such an impactful move that Sorbara later told Steve Paikin that Pupatello hasn’t spoken to him since.
Without the drama of a convention or an endorsement from a former premier, there is unlikely to be an identifiable stampede of support following any specific endorsement in this race. But perceptible or not, when added together, the endorsements a candidate receives may be enough to create the kind of momentum that determines the outcome of a long and winding race.
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