Andrea Horwath wants to come off different from Ontario's other two major party leaders. She just doesn't want to come off too different.
Such is the delicate balancing act the rookie leader of the provincial New Democrats is trying to achieve, heading into her biggest weekend since getting that job.
As the NDP prepares for a campaign kickoff at which it will release something approximating an election platform, it has its biggest opening in two decades. Unpleasant memories of the Bob Rae era are fading. Courtesy of Jack Layton's national leadership, the brand has gotten stronger. And neither the Liberals nor the Progressive Conservatives are exactly setting the province on fire.
Most importantly, recent elections at both the federal and municipal levels have suggested that a volatile electorate is prepared to take some chances, and to reward leaders who stand out a little from the pack - something that should play directly to Ms. Horwath's advantage, given the contrast she naturally strikes with both the Liberals' Dalton McGuinty and the Tories' Tim Hudak.
Her gender is an inescapable part of it, but it's far from the whole story. Ms. Horwath does empathy better than her opponents, and she has a down-to-earth manner that could look very appealing amid all the overheated campaign rhetoric this fall. Even the NDP's relatively low operating budget, a constraint in other ways, could help her look less slick.
But when it comes to substance, rather than style, the differences thus far have been a little harder to discern. And that's largely by design.
The New Democrats' weakness, a senior strategist notes, is rarely that they're considered unambitious. On the contrary, it's that they're seen as "starry-eyed dreamers."
So following the lead of Mr. Layton, Ms. Horwath is shying away from the sorts of expensive, ideologically driven proposals that typically excite her party's membership. "A key factor in our federal success was grounding Jack's bold vision for a better Canada in practical first steps that seemed realistic and achievable to people," the strategist says.
Beyond that, Ms. Horwath seems determined to show that the NDP understands that the middle class feels squeezed right now, and is prepared to venture outside its traditional comfort zone to do something about it. This weekend's policy document -which will focus on jobs and the economy, cost of living and health care - will likely lean heavily on the same kind of pocketbook politics Mr. Hudak likes to play.
The obvious danger is that, when both the Tories and the NDP propose to take the harmonized sales tax off household energy bills, voters could be more inclined toward the one that has more of a record of cutting taxes, and a better chance of forming government.
Meanwhile, Ms. Horwath risks missing her opportunity to show that she's thinking bigger than her opponents. If Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Hudak have a shared liability, it's a perceived sense of entitlement - each leader sometimes giving the sense that he wants to be premier just because he thinks he's the best person for the job. But if Ms. Horwath herself seems to be bidding for votes, rather than presenting a broader alternative vision, it's questionable whether she'll be able to capitalize on that.
Ms. Horwath, like Mr. Layton, is clearly playing a longer game. She wants to build a more pragmatic NDP that competes in every election; one that ultimately supplants the Liberals as the party of the centre-left. And that means shifting with the mood of the province, even if that requires moving somewhat in lockstep with the other parties.
Her version of the NDP, still very much a work in progress, might ultimately prove more different from its own past incarnations than from the parties it's up against. For now, Ms. Horwath will be hoping that the contrasts in style and in reputation strike an effective counterbalance with the similarities in substance.
Adam Radwanski