Campaign chair urged McGuinty to adopt Harper's election strategy

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Greg Sorbara, the chair of the Ontario Liberal campaign, encouraged Dalton McGuinty to borrow from Stephen Harper's playbook and adopt his winning phrase: elect a "strong, stable, majority government."

But not having quite achieved majority status Thursday night, the Liberals are leaving the door open for any opposition member who may want to cross the floor, Mr. Sorbara now says.

"If they come knocking on the door, you know, we'll have a discussion," Mr. Sorbara says in a post-election interview Friday. "It's really not a concern. Look, having 54 members or 53 members, it doesn't really make that much difference."

Really? One seat short of majority government?

It doesn't make a difference to the veteran MPP because he expects the Speaker will come from one of the opposition parties, which would effectively give the Liberals their majority.

In addition, he believes the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats do not have any desire to "thrust" Ontarians into another campaign any time soon.

Reflecting on the 29-day campaign, Mr. Sorbara, who has served as the McGuinty campaign chair in the last three elections, notes that the Liberals were written off by the polls even before they started campaigning. This was to be Progressive Conservative Tim Hudak's election to win.

It was Mr. Sorbara's job, however, to make sure that did not happen. So, he devised the plan that involved borrowing that winning Mr. Harper phrase.

Mr. Sorbara recalls their first campaign meeting, which took place just after the May 2 federal election. The federal Liberals had just had the stuffing knocked out of them and everyone was "really down."

But that meeting turned out to be a game-changer.

"My mission was to take their minds off of that and set their minds back on to the mission that we were on. And that's why I called upon the Harper example."

Prefacing his remarks by asking the 50 or so people in the room "not to take offence," Mr. Sorbara launched into an explanation as to why they needed to "replicate what Mr. Harper has just done federally."

What the Harper Conservatives had done was to repeatedly tell Canadians that in these times of global economic uncertainty this was no time to switch leaders or governments.

Mr. McGuinty would do the same – convince voters that the Liberals were on the right track; that it would be "folly" to change course now, given the state of the world economy.

"It's what Mr. Harper did," Mr. Sorbara says. "That's not to say we follow his policies. But our mission was very similar to the mission of Mr. Harper."

And so the message of a "strong, stable majority government" for Ontario was adopted.

If that was a turning point, the low point was in June when the Hudak Tories unleashed their first wave of negative ads, portraying Mr. McGuinty as the "Tax Man."

Liberals were understandably uneasy. "A lot of folks kept saying, 'My God we're getting the bejeezus beaten out of us and we've got to fight back, go negative and mark up Hudak,'" Mr. Sorbara says.

The campaign team, led by Mr. McGuinty, resisted. Staying positive, disciplined, and on message was part of the Liberal strategy.

Another part was to emphasize three key points, over and over again, throughout the campaign: the McGuinty eight-year record, the Liberal platform and Mr. McGuinty's experience as a leader. He was up against two rookies.

While the Liberals lost 19 seats and failed to form a majority government, the plan worked.

But on Friday, Mr. Sorbara received some reassurance. He spoke to another Ontario premier, Bill Davis, whose Progressive Conservatives ruled the province from March, 1971 to February, 1985. For six of those years, Mr. Davis governed with a minority.

"Things worked out pretty well," Mr. Sorbara notes. It also worked out for Mr. Harper during his five years of minority Parliament.

For Mr. Sorbara, meanwhile, this is not so much a minority government as it is an "almost majority minority government."