With an Ontario election campaign looming as early as May, Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak insists this time he’s ready for prime time.

Hudak — who led opinion polls for months before the Oct. 6, 2011 election but fell short, merely reducing the Liberals to a minority government — said he has learned from his mistakes.

“We drank a bit of our own bathwater. There’s a lesson . . . sometimes you can believe your polls too much,” he told the Star in an interview Wednesday.

To help him improve, Hudak is using the services of Greener and Hook, a high-profile Alexandria, Va., political consultancy firm that does work for Republican clients such as House Majority Leader John Boehner and one-time presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann.

“It’s always good to have some outside advice — particularly objective advice,” he said, noting strategist William Greener III was an official in former president Ronald Reagan’s administration.

“My ulterior motive is I’ll do a little bit of work and do a few exercises and he can reward me with Ronald Reagan stories,” the PC leader quipped.

Hudak pointed out “this is not from taxpayer dollars, this is PC Party dollars” and both McGuinty and former Tory premier Mike Harris used prominent U.S. consultants while in opposition.

McGuinty retained David Axelrod, the former Chicago Tribune reporter instrumental in President Barack Obama’s success, while Harris hired Mike Murphy, who played a key role in campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney.

“This is not uncommon. Will I seek communications advice from people here in Ontario, in Canada? Of course. I think it’s helpful to have sort of the objectivity from outside of the immediate day-to-day. There’s clarity and sometimes you get into habits and they can see through that.”

Hudak, who hopes NDP Leader Andrea Horwath helps him topple Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals in a budget confidence vote expected next month, has been working hard on fundraising and policy-making.

The Tories raised $2.1 million at their Toronto dinner last week — though they will still have less campaign cash at their disposal than the Liberals due to self-imposed constraints — and have released a dozen policy papers that will be distilled into a right-leaning platform of drastic spending cuts.

But Hudak emphasized the election can’t come soon enough.

“The longer we delay, the more difficult the task is going to be.”

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