Crombie leading after first round of voting for Ontario Liberal leader | Globalnews.ca

Voting for the new leader of the Ontario Liberal Party is going to a second round, with Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie leading after the first tally.

Ted Hsu, a current provincial caucus member and a former Liberal MP, secured the fewest points in the first round of voting with 1,300 and has dropped off the ballot.

His supporters’ second choices are now being tallied up and added to the points of the remaining three candidates: Crombie, Liberal MP and former provincial cabinet minister Yasir Naqvi, and Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith.

Crombie has the highest number of points after the first ballot with 5,559, followed by Erskine-Smith with 3,320 points and Naqvi with 2,760 points.

Party members voted using ranked ballots and points get awarded on a weighted system.

The magic number to win is 6,471 points.

Former premier Dalton McGuinty spoke at the leadership convention Saturday and said the four candidates brought excitement and energy to the party and are responsible for renewing it.

“Our job beginning today is to rally behind the new leader and give them that support,” he told the crowd.

“Then in the days and years that follow, our job is essentially threefold: encourage our leader, support our leader, defend our leader. All this demands…that we come together and stay together, and it’s important to understand – we don’t just owe our unity to our leader and to our party, we owe it to our province.”

The leadership race has seen the candidates sign up a record number of members, with more than 100,000 people eligible to vote for the new leader – up from 44,000 and 38,000 in the two previous leadership contests — though it remains to be seen how many actually voted and how many will stay members through to the 2026 election.

The party also announced last month that it had paid off its $3 million debt from the 2022 election, thanks in part to fundraising during the leadership campaign, which saw the party garner more than $1.46 million in the third quarter of 2023.

Members ranked candidates from one through four, and points get awarded on a weighted system depending on how many people vote in each of the 124 ridings.

Each constituency association gets 100 points, to be awarded based on the percentage of the vote each candidate receives from members in that riding. As well, there are 10 student clubs that will award 50 points, and eight women’s clubs with five points each, for a total of 12,940 points.

Erskine-Smith and Naqvi have endorsed each other as second choices, though their supporters are not obligated to rank them that way.

None of the remaining candidates have seats in the provincial legislature, so the eventual winner will have to decide whether to look for a riding in which to run or to stay outside the chamber and build the party that way.

John Fraser, who served as interim party leader, worked as a staffer for McGuinty and said his former boss spent part of his time as Opposition leader travelling around Ontario in a minivan meeting people.

“That’s up to the leader what they want to do,” he said in terms of whether the new leader should seek a provincial seat.

“A lot of what happens in here is important, and what happens every day in Ontario on Main Street in communities is really important too.”

Fraser has served as interim leader twice, both after Wynne resigned in 2018 and before Steven Del Duca was chosen to replace her in 2020, and also after Del Duca resigned in 2022.

He ruled out a third stint.

“I’m confident I won’t have to do this again because I think we’re in a good spot,” Fraser said. “We’ve got momentum, and we’re just going to work hard.”

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