Remember Andrea Horwath?

She was the woman who would be premier, poised to lead the NDP to power by leapfrogging past the governing Liberals — ideologically and electorally — in June’s provincial vote.

Now, many in Ontario’s New Democratic Party have forgotten that fantasy. And want to purge any memory of the leader who peddled that dream, along with her team.

Next weekend, they will be pushing back against the hardball tactics that allowed Horwath and her henchmen — and henchwomen — to amass unprecedented power in the leader’s office. Ahead of a formal leadership review scheduled for November, Horwath will face the NDP’s provincial council this coming Saturday and Sunday to explain her controversial tactics — before, during and after the election.

“Andrea is fighting for her life,” says one long-time party worker who has sat in on the party’s internal machinations in recent months.

“Among a very large section of the activist base there is little more than contempt for her,” said the NDP loyalist, who requested confidentiality to speak candidly about the manoeuvres.

It’s not just Horwath’s public policy contortions in mid-campaign. Her internal distortions of the party’s procedures before the election will also be debated by the party’s decision makers, many of them still furious over what they call an extra-constitutional manoeuvre by Horwath’s team.

By sidelining the grassroots — and their representatives in the party’s elected council structure — Horwath cobbled together a hodgepodge campaign platform that was unrecognizable to most New Democrats in the last election: More centrist than the Liberals, out-Torying the Tories, she lurched rightward without first securing the support of her own party.

The rebellion is gathering momentum not just in Toronto, where the party was routed, but across Northern Ontario and the rest of the province. Horwath also faces unrest across most of the influential union movement after she ignored pleas to support progressive measures in the last Liberal budget, risked an anti-labour Tory majority, and bizarrely dropped her support for an Ontario pension plan.

Next November, delegates will hear Horwath plead her case. Next weekend, however, the party’s top council will first wrangle over how those delegates will be chosen, limiting the potential for Horwath’s allies to rig the vote by stacking the convention.

In anticipation of a leadership review, Horwath’s team rammed through changes at a pre-election council meeting allowing her inner circle to reclaim — and reallocate — any unused delegate slots 45 days before the November convention. The move was widely seen as a naked power grab orchestrated by the leader’s office, contravening party rules that constitutional changes can only be agreed at full conventions.

Party secretary Darlene Lawson, a Horwath loyalist, declined an interview, relying on a prepared email statement to defend the procedures as perfectly normal.

But New Democrats obsess as much about process as politics. By flouting the rules, Horwath has riled grassroots members who were already apoplectic about an opportunistic campaign platform that lacked the party’s imprimatur and descended into pandering.

At the last automatic post-election leadership vote in Hamilton in 2012, Horwath was at the peak of her popularity in public opinion polls yet garnered an unspectacular 76.4 per cent support. (By comparison, then-PC leader Tim Hudak won 78.7 per cent at his own party’s review.)

If Horwath wins less than the traditional benchmark of 66 per cent in November, her leadership would be damaged and she might feel compelled to resign. Hence her bid to control the delegate selection process as much as she can.

It’s hard to predict how Horwath will fare in the review, but the early signs point to a breach with organized labour that could be her undoing. As many as 30 to 40 per cent of the delegates in November could come from labour unions (counting those from riding associations who have personal ties to labour).

It’s no secret that the top leadership of the Canadian Labour Congress has undisguised contempt for Horwath after she refused to support a public pension plan for Ontario (along the lines of an enhanced CPP) which the labour movement holds dear. The CLC’s new leader, Hassan Yussuff, viewed Horwath’s actions as a personal betrayal and is known to have described her as “a coward” who should be dumped.

Most of the Ontario Federation of Labour’s member unions are also deeply unhappy with Horwath’s moves, not least her refusal to meet them as a group.

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“If the vote were held next week, she wouldn’t hold on,” predicts one party veteran.

Perhaps reports of her political demise are premature, and the embattled NDP leader will redeem herself through contrition, persuasion and purges. But with barely two months to go, Horwath may soon be gone.

Martin Regg Cohn’s Ontario politics column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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