We’ve been warned: This will be an election unlike any other since Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton for the American presidency.

Get ready for a rematch of sorts on local soil, pitting PC Leader Doug Ford against Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne. It’s already happening here, now — three weeks before the official campaign begins for the June 7 vote.

While the outcome remains unpredictable, the ugliness looks unstoppable. The more Ford lashes out, the more Wynne vows to throw it right back at him.

Reprising the role of the U.S. president, Ford played his Trump card against Wynne this week, casting the premier as a criminally inclined Hillary Clinton incarnate: a politician who must be investigated for illegalities — not least email deletions — of the kind that could land her behind bars.

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Making wild accusations of improprieties — utterly unproven — Ford claimed that “if Kathleen Wynne tried to pull these kinds of shady tricks in private life” the result would be Liberals like her landing “in jail.”

We’ve seen this campaign before. He might as well have mouthed Trump’s infamous chant: “Lock her up!”

While Ford’s fulminations left little to the imagination, the premier’s impassioned counterattack spelled out a new campaign template: If the Progressive Conservative leader wants to play bully, the Liberal leader won’t play victim.

“Doug Ford sounds like Donald Trump, and that’s because he is like Donald Trump,” Wynne told a news conference Wednesday.

“He believes in an ugly, vicious brand of politics that traffics in smears and lies. He’ll say anything about anyone at any time.... That’s how Trump campaigned in 2016 and that’s how Ford is campaigning right now.”

Wynne told reporters she felt so strongly about Ford’s tactics that she had written out her thoughts the night before. But even as she read her statement, the premier stressed she won’t be following the conventional script.

This time, she promised not to repeat the mistakes that others have made against populist firebrands:

No matter how vicious the tone, don’t turn the other cheek. If Ford detours from the campaign trail into the gutter, don’t expect Wynne to take the high road.

“I guarantee you that it will get worse before it gets better,” Wynne warned.

The premier quoted former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama’s admonition that “when they go low, we should go high.” Unfortunately, there’s not always a happy ending in the blood sport of politics.

“I loved that idea when she said it — until we ended up with Donald Trump in the White House. So, I’m sorry, but not again. Not here, not in Ontario,” Wynne mused.

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“I’m going to call that bullying behaviour out for what it is.... He may be Donald Trump, but I’m not Hillary Clinton, not in Ontario, and Ontario is not the United States of America.”

The similarities between Ford and Trump are numerous — attacking female reporters with vulgar language, condemning law enforcement authorities, claiming elections were rigged until he won them, demeaning those with vulnerabilities (Trump targeted a disabled journalist, Ford went after people with autism). On Wednesday, Wynne contrasted the Ford-Trump persona with Canadian politicians of the past who were models of civility — Bill Davis, John Robarts, Lester Pearson, Flora MacDonald.

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One former premier she didn’t mention was Mike Harris, to whom many critics often compare Ford for trying to take the province right. It’s a false analogy both on ideology and personality grounds.

While many disagreed with the Harris agenda, few doubted his political discipline — learning the ropes as a backbencher and cabinet minister, then hiring the best and the brightest to map out his Common Sense Revolution when he rose to PC leader. He could take cheap shots and display callousness, but Harris was far closer to a George W. Bush than a Donald Trump.

By contrast, Ford is Trump’s twin because he is all about disruption, destruction and dysfunction. He is a populist without a plan, a loner who can’t harness a team, unsupported by most in his caucus and unloved by most staffers who have seen him up close.

Despite his spurious allegations of ethical lapses (falsely linking her to David Livingston, convicted in January of illegally deleting emails while working for ex-premier Dalton McGuinty — but never for Wynne), Ford is the candidate who is demonstrably ethically challenged. As a councillor, he was sanctioned by the integrity commissioner for improperly using his influence at city hall to benefit clients of his family business.

Unlike Clinton, Wynne has never been accused of deleting emails (nor has McGuinty, for that matter). And unlike Ford, the premier has never been cited by an integrity commissioner for abusing her office.

Let he who is without ethical sins recast that first chant: “Lock her up!”

Correction - April 19, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version to update an incorrect headline that said, “How the Trump-Clinton campaign became a Ford-Wynne rematch.”

Martin Regg Cohn is a columnist based in Toronto covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn

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