Bonnie Crombie is a game changer. Here’s why Doug Ford is worried about her

“Game changer” is perhaps Doug Ford’s favourite phrase.

Bonnie Crombie is possibly one of the premier’s least favourite people.

But Crombie, it must be said, is a game changer in Ontario politics today as she prepares to switch playing fields.

Crombie made big news last week as the mighty mayor who engineered Mississauga’s liberation from Peel Region. Score one for Her Worship, who persuaded the mighty premier to let her people go.

She made headlines again Tuesday by announcing a move from Mississauga to Queen’s Park: Crombie is poised to run for leader of Ontario’s fledgling Liberals, while persuading the people of the province to let Ford go.

Toppling the premier would make it game, set and match for Crombie. Can she keep her eye on the ball for as long as it takes?

Ford is crying foul. How dare Crombie pivot from mayor to premier quite so quickly on his watch?

“You can’t be … mayor and running for a leader,” Ford complained to reporters, peevishly if not indelicately: “You can’t put your butt on both sides of the fence.”

That such visceral imagery is top of mind for our seat-of-the-pants premier is revealing. He can’t get Crombie out of his head, nor turn the other cheek.

“In my opinion, it’s a real slap in the face to the residents there,” he fumed, unable to butt out.

Ford has a point when he accuses Crombie of unseemly haste and a daunting juggling act ― she will retain her mayoral chair while trying to unseat the premier. Yet perhaps it’s beside the point ― for one man’s overwork is another woman’s multi-tasking.

Crombie first won election as an MP in 2008, but went down to defeat in the federal Liberal drubbing of 2011. Within months, she pivoted to Mississauga as a city councillor, ultimately winning the endorsement of Hazel McCallion to succeed her as mayor in 2014 (she won re-election last year with more than 78 per cent of the vote).

Crombie achieved McCallion’s lifelong dream of independence from Peel. Yet within days of that victory, she was plotting a new path.

No columnist is clairvoyant, but it’s a safe bet Crombie will be a “game changer,” in Ford’s parlance, for a Liberal leadership race that has so far fallen flat. More than any rival, she can claim name recognition and fundraising cognition; she is good at governing but also not bad at goading, thanks to her years in opposition.

Crombie attracts attention. Which is why Ford is watching her closely, if not obsessively.

Not to put words in the premier’s mouth, but maybe what he meant to say is that Crombie is keeping a foot in each camp — municipal and provincial — while biding her time. That said, she is not, by temperament, a fence-sitter.

Officially, her campaign claims she’s just testing the waters with a campaign that is merely exploratory. But dilatory she is not.

Politics, like life, is all about timing ― not perfect timing, just being in the right place at more or less the right time. Crombie tried but failed to win a delay of game in the Liberal leadership race, which will now be decided in December.

There is little time to lose if she wants to win. If she is predestined to triumph in the Liberal leadership race, then it is merely the precursor for the premiership contest.

By Ford’s account, it has been a long time coming: “She’s been campaigning for five years,” he muttered.

“Bring it on.”

But what will the 2026 election campaign bring to the province? For all her name recognition, Crombie’s political persona remains unknown outside Mississauga.

Mayors tend to be more practical than ideological ― paving potholes or, in her case, blowing up Peel. But the latest clues from Crombie are especially pointed.

No more left-leaning Liberal party under her leadership. Centrist, if not centre-right, is the path to power, she insists.

“It’s very important that the Liberal party be brought back to the centre, which is where our roots are,” she told the Star. Boasting that she has no baggage from the previous Liberal governments of Kathleen Wynne or Dalton McGuinty, Crombie argued that the party “moved too far to the left” under their rule.

She believes the Liberals’ leftward drift helped drive voters into Ford’s arms. But history records that the McGuinty and Wynne Liberals won majority governments when they ate the NDP’s lunch with a lurch to the left; perhaps Crombie, like Ford, is less preoccupied by today’s New Democratic Party.

Indeed, she seems more focused on geography than ideology. Despite her mayoral antecedents, Crombie is mindful of the Liberal party’s rural deficit ― the party has been in a rut outside the big cities since the McGuinty years.

She is not well known outside the GTA, but will play up her suburban bona fides across the province. Born in Etobicoke, rooted in Mississauga, Crombie aims to put the 905 back in play while levelling the playing field in the countryside.

If successful, her shift ― diversifying the demography of the Liberal voter pool ― could be the real game changer in Ontario politics. Win or lose, the only certainty is that Ford won’t be at a loss for words as he pivots to the coming Crombie campaign.

Martin Regg Cohn is a Toronto-based columnist focusing on Ontario politics and international affairs for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn