First, she found herself in Doug Ford’s firing line. Now, Andrea Horwath increasingly finds herself the target of Liberals attacks, too.

With the third-place party in the legislature consistently running a solid second in polls, the NDP leader is fending off both the leading Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals in the run-up to the June 7 election.

“It’s no doubt a sign of shifting polls and a recognition that the contest is shaping up differently in different parts of the province,” said Sean Speer of the University of Toronto’s school of public policy and governance.

“Northern Ontario is a good example — there are various parts of the region where the PCs’ main opponent may be the NDP rather than the Liberals,” said Speer, who is director of the Ontario 360 Project, a website that looks at provincial election issues in detail.

Read more:

An NDP government would make hydro public again, end off-peak pricing, Horwath says in Sudbury

Doug Ford accuses opponents of ‘playing politics’ over his controversial comments about immigration

The four candidates wanting to be Ontario’s next premier, and what they’re promising

“The NDP is going to face more scrutiny than it usually does, including its policies and its candidates. This is a real test. How realistic is its agenda? Have its candidates said non-mainstream things online and elsewhere?

“The next week may well determine if Andrea Horwath and her team are ready for prime time.”

On Friday, at a leaders debate on northern issues, in Parry Sound, the PCs accused a Kingston-area NDP candidate of being an anti-mining activist and radical environmentalist — something Ford mentioned several times during the hour-long event. Horwath told the audience that Ramsey Hart is now a food bank executive.

Ford continued his attacks on Saturday, saying the party is no better than the Liberals who have governed for 15 years.

“It’s clear the NDP have taken a page from Kathleen Wynne,” Ford said at a retirement home in Etobicoke Centre, a riding the Conservatives hope to wrest from the Liberals.

“They’ve taken a page from her playbook making promises they can’t keep, promising more of your money to try and win the election.”

The Liberals, too — facing voters who appear to be keen on change at Queen’s Park — have turned their sights on the NDP, accusing the party of covertly planning to raise business education property taxes.

Those attacks came after a good week for the NDP, and after a high-profile boost — what Horwath called a “historic endorsement” from the 81,000-member Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

Though Wynne downplayed it, in education circles it was seen as a clear slap to the Liberals, who have enjoyed widespread support from teacher and support staff unions for decades.

Following the debate, Horwath headed further north to Sudbury, for several campaign events in a riding where the NDP has high hopes.

Both the NDP and Progressive Conservatives feel they can knock off Liberal incumbent Glenn Thibeault, a former federal NDPer who was minister of energy in Wynne’s Liberal government. The parties see him as vulnerable over hydro bill outrage and an election bribery scandal than landed in the Sudbury courts — though the judge quickly found the two accused not guilty.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The NDP candidate is Jamie West, a community organizer who is president of the Sudbury and District Labour Council.

The PCs are running former NHLer Troy Crowder, a local who played for the New Jersey Devils and Los Angeles Kings during his hockey career.

“Troy Crowder is an excellent candidate and we believe the Ontario PC Party, under the leadership of Doug Ford, is going to have a massive breakthrough in Northern Ontario,” said Ford spokesperson Melissa Lantsman.

The Liberals say they are hearing about health, mental health and seniors care from locals, and Thibeault said that going door to door “it’s great to see their reaction when they hear about some of the work we’ve been doing.”

“I’m not taking anything for granted,” he also said. “I’ll be working my butt off over the next 25 days talking to people about the Liberal plan for care, not cuts, and discussing the kind of future they want for Ontario.”

Wynne has also said she will not alter her style to be more like Ford, or Horwath, despite how her party is doing in the polls.

“I’m not going to campaign on slogans — slogans do not help people,” she said. “So am I going to campaign like Doug Ford? No. And I’m not going to campaign like Andrea Horwath either. I’m going to campaign like a Liberal — I’m going to campaign based on my knowledge of how we need to have a balance between supporting and working with the private sector and working to create those jobs, and at the same time, investing in people and in the care and supports they need.”

Horwath, on the way back from her two-day tour — she also hit Orillia and Barrie on the drive to Toronto — she said she was “thrilled” to see so many people out at the campaign stops.

When asked about NDP fortunes in this election — after holding third-place party status during her near-decade as leader — she said there’s “such a sense of energy and excitement and momentum.

“For me, it’s trying to get the sense of where people are at … I’m excited. I’m excited about how positively people are accepting or embracing our platform.”

On Sunday, at a Mother’s Day campaign stop in East York, Horwath announced that 69 out of 124 New Democrat MPP hopefuls are women, or 56 per cent.

The NDP believes hitting that percentage is a first for an Ontario party.

Read more about: