Steven Del Duca vows he will win his riding, Doug Ford begs to differ
If there may be one using within the province the Ontario Liberals most desperately wish to win on election night time, it is Vaughan-Woodbridge, the place celebration chief Steven Del Duca is working.
Del Duca is attempting to reclaim a seat that he misplaced within the final election by a whopping 7,945 votes.
He faces a rematch in opposition to Michael Tibollo, who served as a cupboard minister all through the Progressive Conservative authorities’s four-year time period however was twice demoted to lower-profile posts.
“Michael Tibollo is one in every of our brightest ministers,” PC Chief Doug Ford declared at a information convention in Niagara-on-the-Lake Thursday. “He is accomplished an unbelievable job for the individuals of Vaughan, and I am assured that he’ll win his using.”
For his half, Del Duca is expressing equal confidence of a victory.
Requested Friday throughout a information convention in Ottawa whether or not he’ll step down as Liberal chief if he loses, Del Duca thumped his water glass on the desk beside him and shot again, “I will win my seat in Vaughan-Woodbridge,” to whoops and applause from the Liberal partisans in attendance.
Del Duca’s 2018 loss in Vaughan-Woodbridge was a part of the Ontario Liberal Occasion’s worst election exhibiting in its historical past, profitable simply seven seats within the province, none of them in the 905.
As lopsided because the Tibollo-Del Duca race was, it was really the smallest margin of victory for the PCs among the many 10 seats they carried in York Area.
“I used to be so proud to signify Vaughan within the legislature for six years,” stated Del Duca, who first got here to Queen’s Park in a byelection in 2012.
A few of Del Duca’s confidence could come from the large margin of victory he loved in Vaughan-Woodbridge in 2014: almost 17,000 votes, carrying greater than double the tally of his PC competitor in that election.
There are additionally indications that the Ontario Liberals are placing added emphasis on profitable the seat. The celebration focused Vaughan-Woodbridge with Fb advertisements early final week, in keeping with a report within the Queen’s Park Briefing e-newsletter, citing publicly accessible data from Fb mum or dad firm Meta.
A few of the on-line advertisements tout Del Duca’s connection to the using.
“My household lives, works and goes to highschool in Vaughan-Woodbridge, and I will by no means cease serving this group,” reads one.
When requested Friday about his probabilities of profitable the seat, Del Duca spoke of getting lived in the neighborhood for greater than three many years, and he listed accomplishments throughout his time because the MPP, corresponding to securing funding for a brand new hospital and the extension of the TTC subway line to Vaughan.
“Most significantly, it’s the group that my spouse and I’ve chosen to stay in to lift our children in,” the Liberal chief stated. “I do know my neighbours … and so they know that 4 extra years of the Ford Conservatives will solely maintain them again and drag us down.”
The final time a pacesetter of one in every of Ontario’s three main events did not win their seat in a basic election was 2007, when then-PC chief John Tory misplaced in Don Valley West. The winner of that race was Liberal Kathleen Wynne, who went on to turn out to be premier six years later.
The opposite candidates on the poll in Vaughan-Woodbridge are: Gerrard Fortin of the Ontario Occasion; Mario Greco of Populist Ontario; Will McCarty of the NDP; Luca Mele of New Blue; Walid Omrani of the Ontario Average Occasion; and Philip James Piluris of the Inexperienced Occasion.
