Ontario's Liberal leadership race is down to four candidates — but only two real choices

The weekend withdrawal of MPP Rob Cerjanec has done more than whittle down the field. It has also crystallized the choice for Liberals in the lead-up to a November convention — or coronation.

For the presumed front-runner, Navdeep Bains, it is a culling of the herd he now heads. But it also exposes the former federal cabinet minister to increased scrutiny of his one glaring weak spot — his lack of a provincial seat.

Cerjanec’s sudden departure leaves only one other MPP, Lee Fairclough, in the race. As seatmates in the legislature, both Fairclough and Cerjanec argued from the first that they were the only two who fulfilled an ineluctable prerequisite for the contest — a seat in the house.

Why choose a seatless leader, they asked, who might fail to win a riding in the next provincial election? Just like the last leader, Bonnie Crombie, who faced the humiliation of losing a seat in her Mississauga home base in last year’s election — a rebel without a riding.

That same thinking propelled the early front-runner in the leadership race, MP Nate Erskine-Smith, to first seek the Liberal nomination in the upcoming Scarborough Southwest byelection to make himself bulletproof. It was the precursor in his quest to be premier, but it proved to be his downfall when he lost the local nomination to Domino’s Pizza entrepreneur Ahsanul Hafiz.

Like Crombie before him, Erskine-Smith had to admit he could no longer cast himself as the invincible winner who would lead the party to power province-wide. His campaign didn’t lack for money, just momentum.

Now, Cerjanec has also dropped out. He lacked both momentum and money, raising enough funds to meet the party’s entry deposit requirement, but going into debt for operating costs — which is no way to run a campaign, let alone a party or a province.

With Erskine-Smith and Cerjanec both gone, it’s shaping up as a race between the major challenger, Fairclough, and the front-runner, Bains. How has it changed?

First, a programming note — it bears mentioning that there are two other candidates, though they are widely seen as also-rans in the race: policy adviser Dylan Marando and finance technology engineer Eric Lombardi have interesting ideas but have never tested them by running for political office, opting instead to leapfrog to the party’s top job from the outset.

In that sense, it’s technically a four-person campaign: two politicians who have been elected to public office, plus two political neophytes who want to be premier.

Bains has the highest public profile and the longest period of public service in elected office, serving more than five years as federal industry minister. A chartered accountant before politics and a business executive after politics, it’s fair to say he has spent a lifetime in politics.

Fairclough, for her part, won election for the first time only last year, but has performed public service of a different sort for much of her life, notably as a hospital CEO. Her challenge, however, is to be noticed — and to stay in the race long enough to rally support from those who see her as a second choice.

As long as Cerjanec was in the race, she might have been able to hope for second-ballot support if his supporters moved to her instead of Bains. Now, the prospect of a first-ballot victory for Bains looms larger.

On the other hand, both Cerjanec and Fairclough were competing against one another in playing the MPP card. Now, she is the last person standing with a seat, with her campaign hoping to sway Liberals with bad memories of Crombie’s inability to win a riding.

No one knows how far in front Bains may be. The only certainty is that the state of play will shift when Fairclough faces off against him in a series of leadership debates in the months to come.

Indeed, all four registered candidates will be equals onstage, gaining equivalent exposure to Liberal audiences. At which point the campaign will migrate from the realm of social media to mass media.

While the contest might appear to be a foregone conclusion to some, the debates will serve as a road test — for rival visions and policies, but also political styles and personal approaches.

Bains has been out of politics for five years; Fairclough has been in elected politics for just over a year; the two neophytes are new to the game. They may be rusty or untested, each in their own way.

But unlike the NDP’s Marit Stiles, who won her party’s leadership by acclamation, the Liberal candidates will have a chance to stress test their platforms and approaches ahead of the next election. As of today, there’s one less candidate, but still one important choice to be made by the party that wants to defeat Doug Ford as premier.