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Wynne called Bortolin last Friday to make the offer.

The premier and her campaign team are asking ridings across the province if their candidates want her to stump for them, said Jordan Renaud, campaign manager for Liberal candidate Remy Boulbol in Windsor-Tecumseh.

Wynne hasn’t asked Boulbol’s campaign yet, Renaud said. If she does, “Well, she is our leader, and we would engage in that conversation, but that would be a broader discussion amongst our campaign and also probably as well with the other local campaigns because what impacts Windsor-Tecumseh impacts Windsor West,” said Renaud.

Not a resounding yes.

Party leaders are used to boost campaigns in ridings where the parties could gain or lose seats. But Wynne, the most unpopular premier in Canada, whose Liberals have plummeted to third place with only 23 per cent support in the latest poll by Ipsos for Global News, is seen as a leader who could hurt candidates. The Ipsos poll asked, “Which leader is someone you can trust?” Only 12 percent of voters named Wynne. The most common response that local candidates from all three main parties hear from voters is they want Wynne out.

Some Liberal candidates try not to say her name or the party’s.

Liberal candidate Amanda Yeung Collucci in Markham-Unionville doesn’t use the word Liberal on her signs, though the signs are red, the party colour.

“I’m not a Liberal, but that angers me,” former Windsor-Riverside MPP Dave Cooke, who was a cabinet minister in Bob Rae’s NDP government, said of Bortolin. “His brand isn’t what’s up for offer. It’s the party. You’re either part of the team, or you’re not, and all the research shows very clearly you can’t run on your own brand. It shows a complete lack of understanding of how parliamentary politics works.”