NDP insider says the party abandoned working-class Ontarians to Doug Ford

Many New Democrats have come to the sobering conclusion that they abandoned the working class to get the chattering class" and were outflanked by Premier Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives.

While the NDP held a slew of urban ridings like Toronto-St. Paul's that many expected the Liberals to win back in last Thursday's election, it lost blue-collar ridings in Hamilton, Windsor and Timmins to the Conservatives who made a deliberate push for the labour vote.

We gave up the working class to get the chattering class. And we do great with the chattering class," a senior NDP insider told the Star on Tuesday, speaking confidentially in order to discuss internal deliberations in the wake of party leader Andrea Horwath's resignation.

The party's appeal to the chattering classes - or the metropolitan middle class of progressives who lost faith in the Liberals - is what propelled the New Democrats to official Opposition status with 31 seats, a loss of nine MPPs from 2018.

The working class ridings we either lost or came pretty close to losing, so that's going to be the big challenge."

In a notable gain, New Democrat candidate Chandra Pasma felled the only Tory MPP in the election, defeating incumbent Jeremy Roberts in Ottawa West-Nepean, with an NDP platform that highlighted a shift in nursing home ownership to non-profit operators, pharmacare, mental and dental care, rent control and minimum wage hikes.

But it lost two Windsor-area strongholds, three Brampton seats, Timmins and Hamilton East-Stoney Creek to Ford's PCs.

There are some pieces we have to figure out," MPP Jennifer French said from her riding of Oshawa, home to General Motors of Canada, where she beat a Conservative challenger by 757 votes. There's only 31 of us heading back."

New Democrats are taking solace in the fact the Liberals collapsed again, winning just eight seats, four short of official party status.

We are in good shape," said campaign director Michael Balagus, with a caveat.

Was I disappointed coming out of the election? Yeah, I was ... I saw a path to victory. It was a narrow path," he conceded, adding there was also the potential for us to be exactly where the Liberals came out."

Despite the Liberal rout, party veterans are warning not to dismiss the Grits as they embark on another rebuild and find a new leader to replace Steven Del Duca, who resigned on election night, not long after Horwath tearfully said she was stepping down as leader.

It will be up to Horwath's replacement to chart a course for the party. The leadership race is expected to be about where best to position the party - the left or the centre-left. Shifting to the centre is a position the party has taken in recent years and is a strategy that has worked for New Democrats in the western provinces.

One potential candidate said the party needs to worry less about leadership branding and listen more closely to its grassroots members.

I'm old school," said MPP Joel Harden (Ottawa Centre), re-elected by almost 18,000 votes over a Liberal challenger. I believe in meeting people on the doorstep and seeing what matters to them."

Fresh ideas are desperately needed, said Dave Cooke, a former Windsor MPP who served as education minister in former premier Bob Rae's NDP government in the early 1990s.

In contrast to Ford, who courted Windsor-area voters before the campaign with his folksy style," funding for an expanded highway, a new hospital and a massive $5-billion electric vehicle battery plant, Horwath didn't make news" on her campaign stops, Cooke added.

All you kept hearing, which drives me crazy, was the Liberals cut for 15 years and the Conservatives are cutting health and education, too.' If that's true, how come the budgets are larger than ever?" he said.

It was the same old campaign that they've run every time. They've got to figure something else out to connect with the people because that isn't going to do it."

Horwath's promises to regulate gas prices to take out the highs and lows and slash auto insurance rates by 40 per cent didn't ring true or seem realistic, added Cooke.

On car insurance, does anybody really believe they can lower it by 40 per cent?"

Horwath, who served through four elections after being chosen as leader in 2009, should have stepped down after the 2018 election, said Cooke and former Parkdale-High Park New Democrat MPP Cheri DiNovo.

If there ever was an opportunity for us to form government, that was it. Kudos that she took us from 10 seats to 40 but the last election should have been the writing on the wall," said DiNovo, a United Church reverend.

It would have given a real boost to the party to have a leadership race going into this election."

Balagus insisted the party is holding its own, but urged a strategy from the new leader and MPPs to reconnect" with more working-class Ontarians before the 2026 vote.

For the Ontario NDP, two terms in a row to be the official Opposition? This time no one can say we got it handed to us. We scratched and clawed our way."

Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @robferguson1