The province of Ontario is now a Ford nation. Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford capped an improbable rise to power Thursday, winning the Ontario election with a majority government and banishing Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals into political oblivion after almost 15 years in office. 
 
 Doug Ford's Ontario Progressive Conservatives will form a majority government following Thursday’s provincial election. The premier-elect says he will continue the legacy of his late brother Rob, a former Toronto mayor. (The Canadian Press) 
 
 “This is incredible. My friends, this victory belongs to you. Tonight the people of Ontario have spoken. You have come together around one common vision of Ontario,” Ford, 53, told cheering supporters in Etobicoke. “We will work every single day for a better Ontario,” said the rookie leader, who only took the helm on March 10 after the resignation of Patrick Brown. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath will be the leader of the official opposition in a radically changed legislature that will feature dozens of new Tory, New Democratic, and Green MPPs. 
 
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 “From the very start of this campaign, people wanted change and I could not be more proud that we offered a positive vision. Change for the better,” Horwath, 55, told loyalists in Hamilton. 
 
 Wynne’s party, in power since her predecessor Dalton McGuinty defeated the Tories in 2003, was reduced to a tiny rump, falling short of the eight seats required for official status in the legislature. Ontario’s first female premier, who succeeded McGuinty in February 2013, took the unusual step of conceding defeat last Saturday in a desperate attempt to salvage Liberal seats. “This is a difficult night,” said Wynne, 65, who is stepping down as Liberal leader. 
 
 Ontario PC leader Doug Ford reacts after winning the Ontario Provincial election to become the new premier in Toronto, on Thursday, June 7, 2018 ( CARLOS OSORIO / TORONTO STAR ) 
 
 “There is another generation and I am passing the torch to that generation,” she said. 
 
 Still, there are few to grasp it — numerous members of Wynne’s cabinet were defeated, including Finance Minister Charles Sousa. Surviving ministers Michael Coteau, Marie-France Lalonde, and Nathalie Des Rosiers are mentioned as potential future leaders. 
 
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 One prominent Liberal casualty was Jim Bradley, St. Catharines MPP since 1977. 
 
 Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner, who turns 49 on Saturday, made history, though, becoming his party’s first MPP by winning in Guelph. “I’m ready to take my seat at Queen’s Park,” said Schreiner. In some ways, Ford is an accidental premier. Until Brown’s departure, he planned on a rematch this October against Toronto Mayor John Tory, who beat him municipally in 2014. But the most eventful provincial campaign in decades was upended Jan. 24 when CTV News aired a report alleging sexual impropriety against Brown involving two women. While he denied the allegations — and is now suing CTV, which stands by its story, for $8 million — he was forced to resign early on Jan. 25. That triggered an expedited Tory leadership race that Christine Elliott, who had finished second to Brown in 2015 and third in the 2009 contest, was expected to win. Even though Elliott received the most votes and won more ridings at the party’s chaotic March 10 convention, Ford narrowly edged her in the party’s convoluted “points” tally. It was a stunning rebuke of the party elites by an outsider that Brown’s Tories had not even wanted as a local candidate. Read more: Opinion | ‘A government for the people’ — but will Doug Ford govern for all Ontarians? Opinion | Ontario has given Doug Ford carte blanche to do virtually anything he wants Dynasties come and go in Canadian politics 
 
 Ontario PC leader Doug Ford wins a majority government. His staunch supporters praise him as a political outsider sure to shake things up at Queen's Park. (The Canadian Press) 
 
 They felt his reputation at Toronto city hall, where he was a key figure in the tumultuous mayoralty of his controversial late brother, Rob Ford, would undermine the modern, inclusive party they were building. At the PC policy convention last November, the one-term Toronto councillor was a solitary figure hovering alone at the back of the hall during the then leader’s speech. But since taking the reins, he has brought Elliott into the fold along with another former leadership rival, Caroline Mulroney, the daughter of former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Both women will sit at Ford’s cabinet table. Also expected to be ministers are the newly elected Rod Phillips and Peter Bethlenfalvy and MPPs Vic Fedeli, Lisa MacLeod, Steve Clark, and John Yakabuski. Having what was seen as a deep potential ministerial bench was critical to Ford’s success. After Horwath narrowed the gap in public opinion polls following his shaky performance in the three leaders’ debates last month, he scrambled to showcase his team, which he maintained was “ready to govern” in contrast to the NDP. 
 
 Many New Democratic candidates, he insisted, were “radical downtown Toronto elites,” who should not be given the keys to Queen’s Park. However, voters may have handed Ford a blank cheque. He has promised to cut spending by $6 billion and vowed to do it painlessly without slashing even one public-sector job. “Not one,” he repeatedly said without specifying where he would find such massive “efficiencies.” His platform, never fully costed despite promises it would be, consisted of a series of populist planks like a 10 cents a litre reduction in gasoline taxes, lowering the floor price of beer to $1, selling beer and wine in convenience stores, and reducing personal and corporate taxes. On the campaign trail, his handlers limited media exposure and the freewheeling Ford from Toronto city hall was recast as a carefully scripted politician behind a teleprompter. Still, he weathered a bevy of problems, including revelations he attended a political fundraiser in April even though that’s against the new campaign finance law, that he appeared to have flouted PC rules to sell memberships for candidate Kinga Surma, and that one of his former candidates was linked to the alleged data breach at the 407 ETR that compromised the personal information of 60,000 motorists. As well, Rob Ford’s widow filed a $16.5 million lawsuit Friday alleging Doug Ford and older brother, Randy Ford, had cheated her and her children out of her late husband’s inheritance. Doug Ford denied Renata Ford’s allegations, which have not been proven in court. Yet none of these potential landmines hurt the first victorious Tory campaign since Mike Harris was re-elected in 1999. For Wynne, defeat appeared to have been preordained with Liberal insiders pointing to 2015 as the year when the wheels began to fall off. That was the year of the Sudbury byelection debacle that saw Wynne’s deputy chief of staff charged with bribery and then exonerated in 2017. It was also when the premier decided to sell the majority share in Hydro One, the provincial transmission utility, using the proceeds to bankroll transportation infrastructure. Both Ford and Horwath successfully conflated the partial privatization with rising electricity bills even though that is a separate issue. Ford has even promised to fire Mayo Schmidt, the highly paid Hydro One CEO he derided as “the six million dollar man.” And in 2015, Wynne injected herself into the federal election campaign, helping Justin Trudeau defeat Stephen Harper to become prime minister, but appearing in the public’s eyes as just another partisan politician. “Our (poll) numbers started to decline then and we never recovered,” confided one senior Liberal, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy. While Wynne returned to her social-justice roots, raising the minimum wage to $14 an hour from $11.60 — and promised to make it $15 next year, a raise Ford has said he will cancel — as well as introducing free prescription drug coverage for everyone under 25, it was not enough to save the Liberals. 
 
 With files from Wendy Gillis For up-to-the-minute results, visit the Star’s Ontario election page 
 
 Politics editor Jordan Himelfarb discusses why election night is important for readers and the newsroom and the steps it takes to get the front page finished on deadline. 
 
 Read more about: ||||| He may be polarizing to a significant segment of voters, have run a messy campaign and come with his own political baggage, but Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford may just have been the "ideal candidate" to win this Ontario election. 
 
 This assessment comes not from a conservative political partisan, but from Don Guy, veteran Liberal political campaign strategist, former campaign director and former chief of staff to Liberal ex-premier Dalton McGuinty. 
 
 "I think he was the ideal candidate because he gave small-c conservative voters a very comfortable home, a very comfortable archetype and a very strong message," he said. 
 
 Certainly Ford benefited significantly from a voting public looking for change — tired of the Liberals and their unpopular leader Kathleen Wynne, who was never able to completely distance herself from the scandal-plagued McGuinty years or convince voters she represented a clean start for the party. 
 
 Ford, as well, was able to capitalize on Ontario voters who may have had no love for him, but remained somewhat skeptical of the NDP. 
 
 But Ford's majority win was also a vindication for his team against the naysayers, including some in his own party, who believed his rise to the leadership doomed their chances. 
 
 In the end, his controversial years by the side of his brother Rob Ford during his reign as mayor, scandals over party nominations, last-minute headlines about legal disputes with his brother's widow — none of it had enough impact to curb his path to victory. 
 
 'He came across as sensible' 
 
 "I think the fact that he came across as sensible during the debates really helped him a lot," said Kathy Brock, a political scientist at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. 
 
 "He didn't get upset during them. It was a very controlled campaign. He was very much in control as well. 
 
 WATCH: Doug Ford greets supporters in victory 
 
 PC Leader Doug Ford addresses crowd at his headquarters in Etobicoke on election night. 0:46 
 
 "He had his key messages. He stayed on point. He repeated them." 
 
 Ford's control, says Brock, also served to counter the image his opponents tried to create, that he was a radical, hard-right conservative and Donald Trump clone. 
 
 None of Trump's xenophobia 
 
 While there may be similarities with Trump in terms of populist appeal, Ford, like his brother, had made significant inroads into various ethnic communities in Toronto, and his campaign has none of the xenophobia attached to the U.S. president's, said Brock. 
 
 And like his brother, Doug Ford portrayed himself as a tax-cutting warrior, a fiscal conservative who believes governments waste too much taxpayers' money. 
 
 That message, says Guy, was simple and repeated over and over — a Ford government will be a responsible steward for taxpayers' money, "and that help is on the way for hard-working families." 
 
 Ford said he would cut taxes, cut the price of gas, cut hydro rates, cut the price of beer and eliminate the deficit while spending billions on transit and infrastructure projects. 
 
 Supporters react in Toronto on Thursday night after learning Doug Ford had won a majority government. (Mark Blinch/Canadian Press) 
 
 "He had a simple product, and he was selling it at a lower price than anybody else in terms of tax cuts and other commitments of reduced prices, whether it was for gas and beer etc.," said Ryerson University political science professor Myer Siemiatycki. 
 
 "So you know those are tangible deliverables that one could imagine people are attracted to." 
 
 WATCH: The leaders and the Ontario election results: 
 
 This is the 2018 Ontario election in 90 seconds. 1:27 
 
 How Ford would deliver on these pledges was never fully explained. It wasn't until the end of May that his campaign put out a costed platform, with the exception of an important detail. While putting a price tag on those and other promises, they neglected to include how any of them would be paid for. 
 
 Finding 'efficiencies' 
 
 Yet Ford's go-to explanation, simply that he would find "efficiencies" in government, may have resonated with voters. 
 
 "People do see government as being wasteful in some ways. Everybody's got a story about that. So that kind of hits home," said Brock. 
 
 Premier Kathleen Wynne tells supporters Thursday night that she is resigning as Liberal leader. (Christopher Katsarov/Canadian Press) 
 
 Ford's strategists employed a front-runners campaign, minimizing the opportunities for him to make mistakes, which included little access for the media. 
 
 Indeed, the imprecision of the policy platform was designed to keep the different coalitions within that party together and the different voting coalitions together without getting pinned down on anything that's too specific, said Cristine de Clercy, a political science professor at Western University in London, Ont. 
 
 Imprecision doesn't hurt 
 
 "Clearly that that didn't substantially hurt them, it was a viable decision," said de Clercy. "If you think you're going to win, why basically give your opponents the opportunity to attack your plan?" 
 
 Ford's campaign, put together relatively last minute following the sudden departure of former leader Patrick Brown, was by normal standards, disorganized and slow, not at all what one would expect from the party, said Jonathan Malloy, chair of the political science department at Carleton University. 
 
 On the campaign trail, Ford got out to greet supporters, including these ones in Ottawa. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press) 
 
 "And you know that sort of chaos is consistent with the leader's brand. I mean, Mr. Ford doesn't pretend to be … a smooth organized individual, and the campaign platform reflected that." 
 
 Chaotic, maybe, but ultimately simple and effective, said Guy. 
 
 'The magic of it' 
 
 "That was the magic of it. The simplicity of the message, simplicity of the strategy, everybody could understand it." 
 
 The winning strategy, Guy says, was simply to take the angry rural conservative base that's been building over the last four elections and add the established voting pool made up of Ford Nation, that core group of supporters in Toronto who were faithful to former mayor Rob Ford and were the key to his one-term rule. 
 
 Some believed Christine Elliott may have been a stronger, safer candidate who appealed to other voters and demographics not enamoured of Ford. But Guy said the strategy the party implemented would not have been readily available to her, meaning no one can say whether Elliott would have made an even better showing. 
 
 "They would have had to invent a whole new wheel." 
 
 Despite Ford's victory, Siemiatycki noted the strong showing of the NDP and the seats won in different pockets of Ontario. 
 
 "This was not a Ford landslide romp to victory," he said. "Among all the Ontarians who voted in this election, the majority did not support Mr. Ford. So it's not like there is this massive groundswell of attachment to Mr. Ford." ||||| TORONTO (AP) — The new premier of Ontario is the brother of late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who became famous for smoking crack cocaine. 
 
 Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives have won the provincial election in Canada's most populous province. 
 
 Doug Ford is a populist who has been compared to U.S. President Donald Trump. 
 
 Rob's Ford's tenure as mayor of the country's largest city was marred by revelations about his illegal drug use. Rob Ford died of cancer in 2016. 
 
 A Liberal defeat Thursday was predicted by outgoing Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne herself just days before the vote. The party had been in power for 15 years. 
 
 Doug Ford's election promises include income tax cuts and he strongly opposes a carbon tax.
– The Ford family scored its biggest-ever political victory Thursday night—more than two years after the death of Rob Ford. Doug Ford, older brother of the notorious former Toronto mayor, was elected premier of Ontario, Canada's most populous province, the AP reports. Ford, who was narrowly elected leader of the provincial Progressive Conservative Party in March after former leader Patrick Brown stepped down amid allegations of sexual misconduct, won a resounding victory over current Premier Kathleen Wynne, whose Liberal Party had been in power for 15 years. Ford—who, unlike his brother, isn't known for drinking heavily or smoking crack—campaigned on a populist platform that led to comparisons to President Trump. Ford's campaign promises included cutting gasoline taxes, lowering the minimum price of beer to $1, and making marijuana more widely available after it is legalized this year, reports the Toronto Star. "He had a simple product, and he was selling it at a lower price than anybody else in terms of tax cuts and other commitments of reduced prices, whether it was for gas and beer etc.," political science professor Myer Siemiatycki tells the CBC. Days before the election, Rob Ford's widow, Renata Ford, filed a $12.6 million lawsuit against Doug Ford and Randy Ford, another Ford brother, accusing them of mismanaging the family business and cheating her and her children out of her husband's inheritance.