What on earth does it say that a certain Tim Murphy was golfing this week in California?
It is the middle of an election here in Ontario. An election we all knew the date of thanks to the fixed election date and yet Murphy is golfing at Pebble Beach.
Why does this matter?
Well it matters because Murphy is one of Kathleen Wynne’s campaign co-chairs for the election campaign. Yet there he is on Instagram posting about his trip to Cali and his tour of the famous links.
Look, if Murphy wants to spend time touring one of the most famous golf courses in the world, can we blame him?
Well, yes.
The Ontario Liberal Party wants to pretend that it is the party of the little guy. Here is one of their top guys playing a golf course, in the middle of the campaign, that costs $525 USD a round. Plus caddie and cart fees.
That’s ok though, Tim Murphy has always been about the little guy. Just like his fellow co-chair and fellow former Paul Martin advisor, David Herle. You might remember Herle as the man who got millions of dollars from generous contracts awarded to him and his firm by the Wynne government.
Like the one that saw him bill Ontario Power Generation at $420 per hour.
Now Murphy says in a comment on Instagram that he had to do a business trip and golfed Pebble Beach as a quick side trip.
Maybe.
Or, they realize they don’t have a hope in hell of winning based off of polls like this one of Toronto ridings. Or from an analysis like this one of my friend and colleague David Akin at Global who looked at who is going where.
Up to and including Friday’s published itineraries, Wynne has made or will make 28 campaign stops but just six, or 21 per cent, have been in ridings where one of her opponents is the incumbent.In fact, on Thursday night she visited for the first time a riding where the PCs are the incumbent, stopping in at a brewery and pub to meet with a handful of supporters in the GTA riding of Whitby.
In fact, Doug Ford has spent 67% of his time in ridings held by the other parties, Andrea Horwath has visited ridings held by opponents 87% of the time and the Liberals have visited a riding held by the other parties just 21% of the time.
The most telling move was Wynne making her first visit outside of Toronto to Ottawa-Vanier, a riding that last voted PC in 1967.
What that tells us is that Wynne is, as my friend Warren Kinsella puts it, trying to save the furniture.
This won’t end well for Wynne or Murphy.