Modern politics is virtually a constant campaign and the one that begins Wednesday in Ontario with the issuing of general election writs has for practical purposes been in motion for many weeks.

As voters turn their minds to choosing the 124 men and women who will make up the 42nd Parliament, the province stands at something of a crossroads.

Ontarians will be weighing starkly differing visions from the party leaders, wide gulfs in experience and sensibility, and hearing a fundamental debate about what citizens owe each other.

Premier Kathleen Wynne carries the burden of leading a Liberal party 15 years in power – an extraordinary lifespan in modern times. That’s a lot of record – with the inevitable scandals, missteps and failures of years – to defend.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, though nine years at the New Democratic helm, remains surprisingly little known and is running on a progressive platform faithful to party traditions and which she should wear comfortably.

Then there’s PC Leader Doug Ford.

Ford has craved political power for years. He horned in — with often baleful results — on his late brother’s mayoralty. When Rob Ford fell ill, Doug ran unsuccessfully in 2014 to succeed him.

A second run for the mayor’s job seemed likely until, out of the blue, former PC leader Patrick Brown was chased from the party in scandal. Ford pounced and won the leadership.

In the weeks since, he has surfed widespread desire for change in Ontario to a large lead in most polls. Some commentators have all but sworn him in as premier.

Still, pollsters and pundits have not excelled in recent electoral history.

There was a belief in 2007 that John Tory, then PC leader, would win. Along came religious school funding.

It was thought Tory’s Tim Hudak would get the job done in 2011. Wrong again.

By 2014, it was assumed Wynne was history. Until Hudak promised budget cuts that would cost 100,000 public-sector jobs.

Recent polling suggests Ford’s lead is shrinking, that Horwath is surging as the most credible alternative, and that Wynne’s anchors might be too weighty to hoist.

In a televised leadership debate Monday on Toronto issues, Ford’s flimsy grasp on the details of provincial governance was jarring. He contented himself with his usual talking points, assailing the Liberal record and vowing to right alleged fiscal wrongs by means of unspecified “efficiencies.” He might believe that’s enough.

But worrisome for Conservatives should be a ham-handedness by Ford that might alienate women voters and the small pool of persuadable voters. He told the premier of Ontario she had a nice smile. He suggested Wynne and Horwath simply weren’t good with numbers.

Strangely, he claimed to have met more Ontarians than Wynne and Horwath combined. More bizarrely, he suggested to the woman who has for five years run the second biggest government in Canada that she couldn’t match his experience in government.

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For Wynne’s part, she is a whip-smart politician who has grown into the gravitas that goes with leadership. Her frustration in debating a man with such a slight grasp of policy was palpable, most notably when she told Ford that in government one can’t just dream up “a slogan and make it policy.”

The wild card in the mix may be the rising confidence and ease of Horwath, who appears blindingly sunny against the grimness of her opponents.

Polls suggest Horwath is emerging as the chief progressive challenger to Ford’s ill-defined program of spending cuts. A survey by Abacus Data suggested this week that the desire for change in Ontario remains strong and while Ontarians are inclined to like Horwath they will need to be impressed.

She began that task Monday by suggesting Ford lacked “the guts” of his predecessors in refusing to explain what the cost would be in jobs of his promised billions in spending cuts.

Again, he provided no answer. And that’s a problem.

As the campaign unfolds, that simply will not do. Ontarians deserve frankness, not mere sloganeering. A sophisticated electorate knows the challenges of the modern world are complex and that solving them is no simple task.

In her uphill battle, Wynne must mount a credible argument why she merits another term, other than the fact she enjoys the job and considers Doug Ford — a man with views of the sort that drew her into politics in the first place — scary.

Ford must stop laying claim to knowledge and experience he does not have. More than anyone, having had a hand in Toronto’s historically disruptive mayoralty, he must submit to voters an honest costing of proposals and evidence that he will be something other than a wrecking ball.

Horwath will need to persuade Ontarians who recall the NDP experiment of 1990 that she is readier and abler than her NDP predecessors and that her laudably specific platform is not, as the premier put it, “magical thinking.”

The shadow dance is over. The leaders and their parties have until June 7 to make their case.

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