NDP’s Andrea Horwath is a new kind of leader

Jim Coyle, The Toronto Star:

Pound for pound, the scrappiest little mutt in the Queen’s Park kennel is surely the NDP.

Leader Andrea Horwath and her plucky 10-member caucus are the very definition of less sometimes being more, making an impact while proving that civility and politics need not be mutually exclusive terms.

Over the year and a half since Horwath won the leadership, the New Democrats have been both the classiest and most productive of the opposition parties.

It was the NDP that produced figures showing the actual impact of the Harmonized Sales Tax on Ontario families.

It was Horwath who led the charge for an inquiry into the overwrought security and alleged civil rights abuses during the G-20 summit in Toronto this summer.

The New Democrats turned up data showing that the installation of smart meters was costing families more but doing little to improve energy conservation.

Most recently, the NDP revealed the contracts given lobbyists by Ontario hospitals, universities and municipalities to wheedle their own provincial government.

Moreover, while the official Opposition talks non-stop about Ontario families, it’s been Horwath who daily brings their stories to the legislature.

“John Cryderman, a small-business owner in Chatham, writes . . . ”

“Take Hasan Nahli, owner of Sammy’s Convenience Store in Welland . . . ”

“Tracy Bissett from Brantford takes care of . . . ”

“Can the premier guarantee Mr. (Chris) Savoia that he won’t be jacking his (hydro) rates higher . . . ”

It’s a strategy that wins little attention at Queen’s Park. But it plays well in the regions, especially areas where the NDP will likely focus its energies come next year’s election.

“Over the last month, we’ve been telling the stories of people across Ontario,” Horwath tells the premier. “These are real people today who want real relief.”

Horwath is, more than anything, real. She has, in short order, put her stamp on the party. And it’s not your grandfather’s NDP.

She’s changing party culture. She’s no fan of ideology, dogma or the macho political rhetoric, petty insult or adolescent smirking of a predominantly male realm.

In a word, she’s interested in results for Ontarians — most particularly the most vulnerable and those hit hardest by the global economic recession.

She does her legwork. She takes public-transit tours through Toronto’s needier neighbourhoods, meeting voters in ones or twos, learning about their lives and burdens.

The stories she tells at Queen’s Park are about mums spending four hours a day to get to work and back, about seniors, those raising children with special needs, the hard-working Ontario families working several minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet.

A recent poll suggests Ontarians still don’t know Andrea Horwath. They should.

She’s a new kind of leader, largely bereft of ego, in politics not to make a career of it but to serve.

It might be her bad luck that the times are not particularly receptive. One recent analysis of poll results said the NDP own the environment as an issue, but it’s less of a vote-mover during hard economic times.

While New Democrats are strong on issues, “their issue matrix does not match what voters care about at this point” and they are not seen as strong on the economy.

It would appear that while Horwath has made people forget her predecessor Howard Hampton, she and the party might still be living down Bob Rae.

In the meantime, they carry on, their tenacity — and considerable, if uncelebrated, success — recalling an old adage.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.