Two of Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie’s major rivals for the leadership of the Liberal Party in Ontario have united in a an effort to prevent her from winning in the upcoming election.
Candidates Nate Erskine-Smith, a Liberal MP, and Yasir Naqvi, also a Liberal MP and former provincial cabinet minister, agreed they’ll each urge their supporters to list the other as their second choice when Ontario Liberals vote a new leader over the November. 25-26 weekend.
Results of the leadership election will be revealed on December 2.
The Liberal Party of Ontario will adopt the ranked ballot system to select the winner. In voting, party members will rank their preferred candidates among the four candidates.
If one candidate gets over 50 per cent of the first-choice votes, they’d secure the victory. If not, the candidate with the lowest number of votes will be dropped from the contest and the second-choice votes from party members are then counted for the candidates that are left standing.
Ted Hsu, former Liberal MP and fourth candidate in the race, wrote on social media that he was also invited to “explore this arrangement,” but declined.
The agreement between Erskine-Smith and Naqvi also seeks to join forces on get-out-the-vote efforts on election weekend.
Crombie, shown in Angus Reid’s online poll in September to be the preferred candidate by a big margin to be the next leader of the Ontario Liberals, embarked on a leave of absence from her mayoral post on October 6.
While she is absent, City of Mississauga councillors will assume the mayor’s duties on a two-month, rotating basis. Their duties include chairing council and committee meetings and attending official events on behalf of Crombie.
Last fall, Crombie won a third-straight term as Mississauga mayor last fall, earning 77 percent of the vote.
