Scott Stinson: Where have all Doug Ford’s challengers gone? Exactly where he appears to like them

Former Mississauga mayor Bonnie Crombie, running this month to reclaim her old job, has landed on a big policy proposal: a subway that would connect the city by underground rail to Toronto. To accomplish this, given the massive expense of such a thing, she would need the help of the Ontario premier.

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The same one, that is, who seemed to dislike her during Crombie’s brief spell as Ontario Liberal leader. He ran negative ads against her that (effectively) branded her as elitist and out of touch with everyday voters, and has informally supported the re-election bid of current Mississauga Mayor Carolyn Parrish.

While that might seem a difficult obstacle to overcome, the good news for Crombie is that there is precedent for a former Doug Ford rival becoming an ally elsewhere in politics. A lot of it.

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The municipal level, especially in the Greater Toronto Area, has become Doug Ford’s Hall of the Vanquished, a soft landing in local politics where instead of fighting the premier his former opponents join him and his ministers at various ribbon-cuttings and picnics.

Crombie is just the latest example. Her time at the head of the Ontario Liberals was grim: a third-place finish in an election that came 14 months after she took over the top job, and a failure to even win her Mississauga riding. Some might take that as a sign that her best days as a politician are behind her, but instead she wants to return to an office she won three times, beginning in 2014. She’s taking on Parrish, a long-time rival (both women are also former Liberal MPs), and she might win: a poll published early in the race had her tied with Parrish.

A Crombie win would be funny for one specific reason: It would potentially put three former Ford foes in charge of cities around the Golden Horseshoe. Andrea Horwath, the former provincial NDP leader who lost two elections to Ford, is the mayor of Hamilton. Steven Del Duca, who preceded Crombie as provincial Liberal leader, is the mayor of Vaughan. (Both are seeking re-election on Oct. 26.)

Last month, Horwath joined Ford at an announcement in Hamilton where the premier touted his government’s investments in housing. Where once she would have fought Ford at every turn, now she smiles and nods when he alights on her town. Instead of spitting fire across from one another in the legislature at Queen’s Park, the two thank each other for the great work they are doing on this or that file. It does not exactly allay the suspicion that much of politics is performative.

Nate Erskine-Smith is yet another defeated Ford challenger who could even be joining them one day at the mayoral table. Not long ago a popular MP in a downtown Toronto riding, unafraid to speak his mind instead of toeing the party line, he was an up-and-comer until he wasn’t: dropped from cabinet after Mark Carney took over the Prime Minister’s Office.

Erskine-Smith decided that he was the man to save the province from Ford, only to discover that the provincial Liberals weren’t nearly as welcoming as he might have hoped. He narrowly lost a nomination race for a Scarborough byelection.

Having planned to use the byelection to secure a seat at Queen’s Park and give him a platform for a leadership bid to replace Crombie, he then scrapped those plans.

Political retirement evidently didn’t take, as he’s now running to claim the Toronto council seat in Beaches-East York, the same riding he represented federally, that was vacated by mayoral candidate Brad Bradford. There has already been speculation that Erskine-Smith has his eyes on a mayoral bid of his own in 2030.

Much could happen between now and then, but it would make more sense than trading a seat on Parliament Hill for a spot on Toronto council. No doubt a mayoral bid would be preceded by an announcement that he was only pursuing it because so many people had demanded it of him.

If it sounds like I am being a little cynical about all this, it’s because I am. While there’s certainly a degree of self sacrifice involved in holding public office and representing one’s constituents, there is plainly some appeal in the trappings of those same offices. Generous salary, good perks, staff to handle a lot of the grunt work: nice work if you can get it.

It must be a pretty decent way to make a living given that so many electoral losers are jumping back in at the first opportunity. (See, for example, Shaun Chen, who resigned as a Liberal MP in August, citing the lingering effects of an October 2025 car crash, and who is now running for a seat on Toronto council.)

Ford, of course, has some experience in this regard. For a guy who made his career in the family business before entering politics later in life, he found it quite to his liking once he got there. A spot on Toronto council, followed by a failed mayoral bid, followed by a successful takeover of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and ultimately a long run as premier.

(When John Tory beat him in the Toronto mayoral race, one of the other failed candidates was Olivia Chow, who had previously held both federal and local office. Chow has, of course, since become Toronto’s mayor and Ford has switched from warning about the calamity of a Chow mayoralty to vocally supporting her.)

It is, it would seem, all part of the game. In many ways Ford feels like the last person you’d expect to enjoy spending his time among career politicians since he seemed to think so little of them before he became one.

But there must be something rather addictive about holding public office, given that all of those people that he has defeated cannot seem to quit it.

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