Of course Doug Ford is running for the suddenly vacant leadership of the provincial Progressive Conservative party, as he announced in a press conference in his mother’s Etobicoke basement Monday. I mean, of course he is.

He can’t lose.

And those of us in Toronto who’d like to see the end of the stranglehold he and his family have held over our politics for almost a decade cannot win. We’re all in for an extra-large dollop of Doug this year, a prospective domination of political headlines from now until October. We can only pray the result doesn’t chain us to him for years longer.

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Let’s back up. Ford had already announced his plans to run for Mayor of Toronto. That seemed to have ended a long period of self-aggrandizing indecision.

The former city councillor, brother of the infamous late mayor Rob Ford, and runner up in the 2014 mayoral contest to John Tory, has spent his time out of office flirting with the idea of running for virtually every job that has come open. He told us he was thinking about running to lead the federal Conservative party in 2016. He told us he was thinking about running for leader of the provincial Conservative party back in 2014. He hinted he might run in a city council byelection in 2016. He was thinking last year about running as an MPP in the upcoming election under Patrick Brown.

He has long seen himself as the likely solution to every problem. If a high-profile race opens registration anywhere in this country, it seems Doug takes a long hard look at his track shoes.

But he seemed to be all-in on the decision to face John Tory in a rematch for the mayor’s office. So much so that he’d already been warned about breaking the rules of campaigning early, before the official election period had begun.

It may seem strange that he’s changed his mind. But he didn’t have to change his mind. The sudden vacancy for the top job in the provincial party is so conveniently timed it means he doesn’t have to choose. Now he gets to run for both jobs.

If he loses the PC leadership race in March, he can still run for mayor. The campaign period for the city gig doesn’t even open until May. Now he gets to start campaigning early, right away. He can spend money, launch advertisements, hold rallies, fire up his organization, make speeches, mount a full-scale campaign for two months.

One might think it would matter that he’s expending all this energy advertising himself for a different job, serving a different constituency, with potentially conflicting policy goals or areas of focus. But for Doug Ford, like his brother before him, the campaign is not really about the particulars of any job or election period or set of issues.

The campaign is folks! Folks! Folks! The elites are trying to keep us out and keep you down! Ford Nation must rise! Respect taxpayers by slashing government!

That’s the platform for mayor. That’s the platform for leader.

Ford has already fired it up, in his announcement: “I can’t watch the party I love fall into the hands of the elites. The elites have shut the door on the grassroots, the foundation of our party,” he told reporters Monday.

As it happens, there’s a lane open to run just that message in this Conservative leadership race. Much of the provincial party base is made up of those sympathetic to populist small-government rhetoric, and that wing of the party has recently been sidelined as the party’s leadership and caucus have prepared themselves as a mainstream centrist alternative to the unpopular Wynne Liberals. Virtually all the other expected or rumoured candidates for the leadership would be running through that same centrist ground that formed the election platform prepared under Patrick Brown. Not Ford.

So he stands a puncher’s chance of firing up enough outsider resentment among the party’s 200,000 members to win the thing — and if he does he’s a leading contender to be premier. In the general election, he’s a more divisive and potentially riskier candidate than many generic Tories—the Wynne Liberals may think him being their opponent is their best shot at holding on despite historically bad disapproval ratings. But the scenario in which he wins the leadership is one in which he’s riding a wave of excitement that defies expectations.

Anyhow, it’s a longshot. He knows that, and his “the elites want me out” entry basically embraces the long odds. This doesn’t hurt him in his mayoral positioning.

His brother set a mold that Doug fits into easily, in which the Ford brand is only made stronger by losing in a certain way. Think of all those city council votes where Rob Ford lost 44-1. Think of the insistent and apparently counter-productive refusal to compromise under the Ford mayoralty. If they go down swinging while howling about their principled stand on behalf of poor downtrodden taxpaying folks, it only emphasizes how the elites of the right, left, and centre conspired against them.

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And that’s a message Ford could then carry right on into the mayoral campaign, against Mayor Blue-Blood-Annex-condo-resident-compromiser-in-chief Tory. Retool in early spring — run a find-and-replace for the job title in your brochures, get a bit of rest — and you’re ready to re-launch the auto-driving people’s tax revolt municipally in May.

Either he’s on the fast-track to the premier’s office, or he’s gotten a head start — legally! — on his bid for his brother’s old desk at city hall.

Ford’s mayoral bid was already dominating the contours of the city election, with Tory positioning against him, and leftists terrified of spoiling for him. That hasn’t changed, and probably won’t. Now we just get more of him.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire

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