Scott Stinson: Dylan Marando tells Ontario Liberals some things they want to hear, and some they don’t

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Dylan Marando has some of the trappings of a long shot entrant in the Ontario Liberal leadership race.

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When he went on a tour of the province’s northern ridings, he slept in tents alongside his campaign manager to save money. (Conveniently, she is also his wife, Elise Maiolino.) He’s trailing the fundraising race, in fifth spot among the five candidates trying to ultimately unseat Doug Ford. And, having never run for elected office before, he’s lower on name recognition than some of his rivals.

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But the 39-year-old introduced himself with something of a bang at last month’s leadership debate, delivering the line of the night in a sleepy affair. “The milk has soured on Doug Ford,” Marando said. “And soon, it’s going to get chunky.”

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A memorable, if somewhat gnarly, metaphor.

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Somewhat surprisingly for a guy who has never done this before, Marando appeared confident and assured on the Brampton stage that night. He comes across the same way in a recent conversation at a Toronto coffee shop, acknowledging that he’s a relative outsider in the race but pleased with the momentum of his campaign.

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“I say this with all the humility I can muster, I’m a winner,” he says. “I worked for (Dalton) McGuinty in his premier’s office, I worked for (Kathleen) Wynne in her premier’s office, I worked for (Justin) Trudeau in his PMO, all my experience comes on the winning side of politics, so I know how to win. I know how to govern, and, ultimately, I think that’s the skill set a voter in a general election is looking for.”

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But first, the former policy adviser has to convince the voters in a Liberal race that lost a bit of momentum last week when the party was shut out in three provincial byelections. The party has polled near the governing PCs on province-wide surveys for months, but the three losses, all in greater Toronto, suggest there is much work to be done to rebuild the brand. And on that front, Marando has a message that would appeal to a lot of party supporters: Liberals, he argues, are good at being in government.

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“I describe myself as a meat-and-potatoes Liberal,” he says. “The meat and potatoes part is publicly funded education, publicly funded health care and empowering local governments to make investments in local infrastructure. I don’t think the assignment is much more complicated than that.”

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Marando says that Ford, for all of his grand visions like an expanded Toronto airport and a tunnel under the 401, had been unable to deliver on the basics.

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“So in some ways, my bid is pretty boring,” he says “Get back to doing all the things that I’d argue Premier McGuinty and Premier Wynne were pretty good at, and recognize that government isn’t very good at picking winners and losers in the economy.”

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But if Liberals might like hearing about the good old days when they were in charge, Marando does have a few opinions that are not widely shared among them.

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Asked if the Liberals can take any lessons from Ford, who has won three elections without ever being particularly popular, Marando says, “I do think stylistically he’s instructive as a politician. I do think he has an ability to read the room, and he has an ability to speak the language that that folks are speaking.”