Ontario’s Liberal leadership race could well make history by giving the province its first woman premier and it gets its first strong contender on Monday.

Kathleen Wynne, a popular MPP, and minister of municipal affair and housing resigned Friday to enter the race to replace Dalton McGuinty.

News of the 59-year-old’s entry prompted a chorus of public praise.

“She’s exactly the kind of leader we need right now . . . she’s not a politician who does a lot of bombast. She doesn’t brag a lot about how great she is but she has confidence in her own ability,” said Sheila Ward, who served with Wynne on the Toronto District School Board and who was the board chair when Wynne was education minister.

A parent activist from Lawrence Park, Wynne was a school trustee when she was first elected as MPP for Don Valley West in 2003. Since then has held many high profile and varied posts, including minister of education, transportation.

“I think she is bright, she has lots of ideas, she energetic but I’m not sure how this played across the province though,” a veteran civil servant, who worked with Wynne, told the Toronto Star Friday.

Wynne is the first candidate to quit cabinet — as per McGuinty’s edict — to seek the leadership.

Among other things, her name has also been raised as a possible candidate for the Toronto mayor’s job.

Ontario’s first openly lesbian MPP, Wynne made a name for herself when she was a trustee of the Toronto District School Board as a vocal opponent of cuts to education by the Harris and Eves governments. Even so, she also became known as a person who could work with trustees of all political stripes.

The mother of three came out when she was 37 and she and her husband lived in adjoining houses while the children were in school.

“To my mind she is what the sitting provincial government needs right now. She is a real respectful leader and a mediator,” said her former trustee colleague Shelley Carroll, now a Toronto city councillor.

In her first portfolio, education (2006-10), Wynne led the government’s efforts to reduce class sizes in the primary grades, to implement full-day kindergarten and to provide more opportunities for high school students to graduate.

“I believe she is astute, she is bright, she is articulate. She can find common areas between differences. I believe she has the ability to find those and engage people. I think she exhibits those qualities as a leader but also as a person,” said Kevin O’Dwyer, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association.

One of the knocks against Wynne might be that she is too close to the teacher unions, especially the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, which actively campaigned for her in the past two provincial elections.

Even though teachers were still speaking with the government back when Wynne was education minister, observers believe she will be the victim in the public forum of the war of words between teachers and McGuinty government, which tried unsuccessfully to impose a collective agreement as part of its spending cuts.

Among her successes was knocking off then Progressive Conservative leader John Tory in 2007, when he decided to leave the safe Tory riding in Orangeville and run against Wynne. It was the beginning of the end for Tory’s leadership.

Tory bears no grudge towards his former opponent.

“She is smart, tough and capable, and I like her,” Tory told the Star, adding that her close relationship with teacher unions may be just what the doctor ordered in order to heal the serious rift between the Liberal government and teachers across the province.

Minister of Children and Youth Services Eric Hoskins, who is also toying with the idea of running for McGuinty’s job, also had nothing but high praise.

“Her voice is not just welcome but is sought out in cabinet, in part because she is very good at expressing progressive ways of looking at things,” Hoskins told the Star.

“I have nothing but respect for her and her very sound advice. She will be missed in cabinet, that’s for sure,” he said.

Pupatello, now director of business development and global markets at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, said: “She is a great girl. I have lot of respect for her, always have.”

NDP critic MPP Gilles Bisson said Wynne and others in cabinet — both current and of recent past — will find it hard to shake the ghosts of governments past.

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“I think the problem that most of them are going to have is how do they run away from the (Liberal government’s controversial) legacy . . . it’s going to be hard for her to distance herself from the decisions she made at the cabinet table. That’s going to be her biggest problem,” Bisson said.

Liberal ins and outs

While Kathleen Wynne is the first official candidate in the race to success Dalton McGuinty, there are others who have said they are contemplating running, including Sandra Pupatello, Deb Matthews, Eric Hoskins, Gerard Kennedy and Glen Murray. Big names officially out include Dwight Duncan, George Smitherman, Chris Bentley and Laurel Broten.

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