Tim Hudak’s divisive campaign was almost even crazier
Soon-to-be-former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak arguably lost last week’s provincial election because of his promise to cut 100,000 public-sector jobs, a scary proclamation that even some party loyalists admit wasn’t sold to the public particularly skillfully. At best, Hudak’s rhetoric was brutally truthful, and now, as intra-party discord begins to leak into the press, we know that it narrowly avoided entering just-plain-brutal territory.
According to the Star, the Tories’ campaign strategists considered and rejected the idea of actually naming some of the public employees that would have been fired under the PC plan. Hudak would have handed out mock “pink slips.” The Star says the campaign even considered holding a press conference in a room wallpapered with the names of Ontario Power Generation employees who earn more than $100,000—some of whom, presumably, would have had their jobs eliminated. To recap: members of Hudak’s inner circle thought that the way to win the election was to incite even more uproar over the single most controversial aspect of their platform, a move that probably would have intensified support among their base while further alienating everyone else. This, evidently, is how elections are lost.
![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/city/tim-hudaks-divisive-campaign-almost-even-crazier/&title=Tim Hudak’s divisive campaign was almost even crazier&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/tim-hudak-transit-624x395.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_252301" align="alignnone" width="656"] (Image: Ontario Chamber of Commerce)[/caption]
Soon-to-be-former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak arguably lost last week's provincial election because of his promise to cut 100,000 public-sector jobs, a scary proclamation that even some party loyalists admit wasn't sold to the public particularly skillfully. At best, Hudak's rhetoric was brutally truthful, and now, as intra-party discord begins to leak into the press, we know that it narrowly avoided entering just-plain-brutal territory.
According to the Star, the Tories' campaign strategists considered and rejected the idea of actually naming some of the public employees that would have been fired under the PC plan. Hudak would have handed out mock "pink slips." The Star says the campaign even considered holding a press conference in a room wallpapered with the names of Ontario Power Generation employees who earn more than $100,000—some of whom, presumably, would have had their jobs eliminated. To recap: members of Hudak's inner circle thought that the way to win the election was to incite even more uproar over the single most controversial aspect of their platform, a move that probably would have intensified support among their base while further alienating everyone else. This, evidently, is how elections are lost.){kind=link}
well, this is crazy, and I’m no Hudak fan at all … but to be fair, this is misleading.
You say that they “considered and rejected the idea” but that they “thought that the way to win the election was to incite even more uproar …”
Well, no, they didn’t … they rejected that idea. You just said that.
They thought that, and then thought the better of it. I don’t think it’s misleading to point out that they were seriously toying with the idea.
Maybe if he did say that instead of teachers, firefighters, cops and nurses people would have voted for him. The manager of the gift shop at the AGO makes over $100k. That is just plain crazy.
The gift shop at the AGO also brings in about $4.8 million dollars in revenue for the gallery so probably better to look at that salary in context.
Wow. They do almost $100,000 a week in sales? I find that a little hard to believe.
It’s all here in their audited financial statements: https://www.ago.net/assets/files/pdf/AGO-Audited-Financial-Statements-2012-13.pdf
Have you seen the prices there? I believe it.
I can assure you no one managing a busy store in Yorkdale or Sherway is making $126k a year.
I would like to see some details on these OPG employees that are making 100K per year. How many got there putting in hours of over-time working in nasty conditions to restore our power? How many of them a nuclear engineers, or professional engineers with unique qualification? Are people under the impression that we’re talking about people in the mail room and helpers? Is it the fact that they wear hard hats?
Maybe spelling Ontario correctly would help this article…..
that honestly would have been the only thing I possibly could have liked if I knew he was going to focus on OPG which is bad bad bad
Discarded ideology and rhetoric. That is why he got creamed.
Tim Hudak is best!