COLDWATER, ONT.—After four months on the sidelines at Queen’s Park, Patrick Brown will take a seat opposite Premier Kathleen Wynne when the legislature returns from its summer break Sept. 14.

The new Progressive Conservative leader easily won a byelection in Simcoe North late Thursday night, increasing his party’s share of the vote and securing a paycheque from taxpayers that will earn him about $180,000 a year.

Brown’s victory followed a short and hot August campaign that saw him slam the Liberals for electricity prices, a provincial retirement pension plan, credit-rating downgrades and scandals under investigation by the OPP.

Liberal attempts to “smear” him as a social conservative backfired, Brown told reporters at a country club in this town northwest of Orillia where dozens of supporters, including MPPs and at least one federal cabinet minister, gathered for a victory celebration.

“The premier’s strategists at Queen’s Park are going to be scratching their heads because their approach was an utter failure here,” added Brown, who also accused Wynne of “shirking her duties” by wading into the federal campaign.

With all but 17 polls reporting, Brown had 53.2 per cent of the vote to 23.8 per cent for the Liberals and 17 per cent for the NDP.

The balloting took place a day after New Democrats complained the Brown campaign placed an ad in the ‎Orillia Packet and Times, breaking an Elections Ontario blackout on advertising before the vote. Brown officials blamed the ad on human error.

Brown was elected leader of the party in May, beating veteran MPP Christine Elliott, who resigned her Whitby-Oshawa seat last Friday. A byelection there is not expected until the new year.

The former Barrie MP portrayed himself as a local boy in Simcoe North, citing family ties in the riding that forms a horseshoe around the top part of Lake Simcoe and extends north to Midland and Penetanguishene.

Wynne called the vote a month ago after the surprise resignation of veteran Conservative MPP Garfield Dunlop, who had criticized Brown during the PC leadership campaign as not up to the job.

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Wynne initially planned to wait until after the Oct. 19 federal election to avoid confusing voters, but relented under pressure from Brown.

He faced veteran Liberal activist Fred Larsen, a retired Orillia teacher who had run previously in Simcoe North, and New Democrat Elizabeth Van Houtte, a social work professor at the Lakehead University campus in Orillia.

Both took shots at Brown during the campaign for living in Barrie and not in the riding. He promised to move to Simcoe North soon.

Liberals used the campaign, which unfolded throughout this cottage country area, to paint Brown as a hard-right conservative who voted against abortion choice and same-sex marriage as an MP under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Brown pledged to not reopen the abortion debate and stressed he led his party’s first official delegation to Toronto’s Pride parade in June, leaving Liberal cabinet minister Brad Duguid to charge that “his rhetoric doesn’t stack up.”

Larsen frequently took Brown to task for qualifying for a $45,000 annual pension after nine years as an MP in Ottawa while leaving Ontarians without workplace pensions to fend for themselves by opposing Wynne’s Ontario Retirement Pension Plan as a “job killer.”

For the NDP, Van Houtte tried to convince voters that electing her would send a message to Wynne to stop the partial sell-off of Hydro One, which both opposition parties warn could lead to higher electricity prices.

Larsen faced heat from some voters, who compared the sale of the Crown utility — which will raise $9 billion for public transit and debt reduction — to the Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government’s decision to lease the lucrative Highway 407 to a private company, costing the province millions in foregone revenues.

Valerie Powell ran for the Green Party, raising concerns about the need to protect farmland.

Patrick Brown’s career in politics

2000: Elected to Barrie council

2003: Re-elected to council

2004: Loses in first federal bid

2006: Elected as Conservative MP for Barrie

2008: Re-elected MP

2011: Re-elected MP

2014: Launches PC leadership bid

2015: Wins the helm of PC Party

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