Progressive Conservative House Leader Jim Wilson is distancing the party from Doug Ford, who has been heralded as a potential high profile candidate.

“He is not our candidate,” Wilson told a news conference he called Thursday to condemn the New Democrats for propping up a “corrupt” minority Liberal government by supporting the Grits’ budget.

Ford, the city councillor brother of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, was described in a Globe and Mail story last weekend as being a hashish dealer in Etobicoke some 30 years ago. Doug Ford has strongly denied the allegation.

“I don’t even know the guy . . . personally I’ve never even met him,” Wilson told reporters who pressed him on whether Ford could still run for the Tories in the next election.

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Wilson was an MPP in the former Mike Harris PC government along with the Fords’ late father, Doug Ford Sr., who he described as a “decent chap.”

The mayor is under a cloud over a video — viewed by two Star reporters and an editor at the U.S. website Gawker — that appears to show him smoking crack cocaine. Rob Ford has dismissed the stories as “false’ and said: “I do not use crack cocaine nor am I an addict of crack cocaine.”

According to several party insiders, the accusations swirling around the Fords are having an impact on the Progressive Conservatives. The Tories have often praised the Fords for their vigilance in controlling municipal spending and fighting tax hikes. But the recent controversy appears to be taking a toll.

Doug Ford said last month he would run for the Progressive Conservatives if there was a spring election, which has been delayed indefinitely now because of a budget deal between Premier Kathleen Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

“We’re gonna go down there and we’re gonna stop the gravy train in Ontario,” Ford told CP24 after an earlier appearance on AM640, insisting the province can find $2 billion a year in savings to cover the transit cost instead of increasing taxes.

“Call an election, Kathleen Wynne, in May and I will run. I will guarantee it and we will defeat you,” Ford said on the station’s John Oakley Show, a favourite landing spot for Conservative politicos.

Tory leader Tim Hudak later said he was “excited to have Doug potentially on board” for the next provincial election and a shot at defeating Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals.

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A poll published Thursday in the Star showed Mayor Rob Ford’s personal problems are damaging the PCs.

The Forum Research survey found 48 per cent believed the controversies swirling around the mayor and his brother are hurting the Hudak Tories.

Only 37 per cent believe the scandal has not harmed the party’s reputation, and 15 per cent didn’t know.

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