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Although Andrea Horwath grew up on the outskirts of Hamilton, in a community better known back then for its “orchards and ice cream” than the grit and steel of the city beyond, she grew roots in the local labour movement early.

She watched her immigrant father pull long hours on an assembly line building cars, and then worked part-time as a waitress to fund her major in Labour Studies at McMaster University.

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That degree paved the way for a career as a community organizer and then as city councillor before she made the leap to provincial politics. Then, at age 46, the soon-to-be single mother of a teenage son clinched the leadership of the Ontario New Democratic Party with 60.7% of the vote.

“She has NDP blood flowing through her veins,” said Ron Corsini, a former colleague of Ms. Horwath’s on Hamilton city council in the late 1990s.

Even still, Ms. Horwath managed to raise some eyebrows in her party Friday when she refused to support an extremely NDP-friendly Liberal budget, instead triggering a spring election that could place her and her party’s political fortunes at risk. A new EKOS poll Friday had her party sitting at 22.2% popularity, a distant third.