TORONTO - It's shaping up to be a battle of the insiders versus the outsider in an upcoming byelection that Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory hopes will return him to the Ontario legislature.
Local Liberal Rick Johnson, who confirmed Monday his intention to run against Tory, wasted no time painting his rival as a clueless, big-city politician who can't understand the concerns of a far-flung rural community.
Many residents feel that Tory is using them "to get a ticket to Toronto," said the 54-year-old school board chairman, who has lived in the riding of Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock for 22 years.
"There's a lot of concerns about the fact that it seems to be that we're being asked to rubber-stamp a backroom deal for John Tory," he said in an interview from Lindsay, Ont.
"This is a community that is very tightly knit, and I'm running to represent our community."
Conservative Laurie Scott, who held the central Ontario riding for five years, stepped aside earlier this month to give Tory a chance to return to the legislature.
Tory has been without a seat since his ill-fated bid in the 2007 election for the Toronto riding held by Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.
His drawn-out search for a way back into the legislature ended Jan. 9 when Scott resigned her seat and took a job as the party's campaign readiness chair.
Her sprawling central Ontario riding -- one of the poorest in the province -- has been held by the Conservatives since 1994, when former cabinet minister Chris Hodgson was elected.
Johnson lost to Scott in the 2007 election, but managed to pull in about 30 per cent of the votes.
Tory, who doesn't plan to move to the riding, said he's not expecting to win just because the party has dominated the area for more than a decade.
"I don't think there's any such thing as a safe seat for anybody, and no one has ever heard me use those words because I never would -- I think that's insulting to the voters," said Tory, who previously represented the rural riding of Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey.
"I'm going to work very hard to earn their confidence and I'm optimistic I can do that. But it's going to be hard work every day."
Tory noted that he spent seven of the last eight days in the Haliburton riding listening to the concerns of local residents.
What the riding really needs is someone with a proven track record in the community who can get things done as a member of the ruling party, Johnson said.
Many Conservative voters have already called him to offer their support, he said.
"All those disgruntled Conservatives across the province who aren't happy with John Tory's leadership can gladly send us cheques," he said.
"We'll take whatever we can get."
The NDP also plans to field a candidate, which could work in Tory's favour by siphoning left-leaning support from the Liberals.
The same could be said for Tory, who is facing similar competition from the right-leaning Reform Party of Ontario, which is planning to name a local candidate, Johnson said.
Johnson said he'll take a leave of absence from his work as co-chair of a Ministry of Education committee to run in the byelection.
The committee is advising the government on how to bring more accountability to school boards and is expected to deliver its recommendations at the end of March.
In 2007, Johnson resigned as president of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association to run against Scott because he was opposed to Tory's controversial promise to extend public funding to religious schools.
The proposal poisoned the Conservatives' chances of defeating the Liberals, leading them to one of their worst showings ever.
Despite calls for his resignation, Tory vowed to stay on as leader and do better.
But his efforts to unite the party were overshadowed by his 15-month seat search and a growing chorus of critics within the party who complain he's too weak to defeat the Liberals in the 2011 election.
If Tory doesn't win this time, it's "game over," said Greg Inwood, a politics professor at Toronto's Ryerson University.
"There's been a lot of controversy around how long it's taken him to find a place to run, and his ineffectiveness by virtue of being outside of the legislature," Inwood said.
"If he loses this, I think we're looking at a new leadership convention for the Conservatives."
Premier Dalton McGuinty said he'll wait for all the candidates to be nominated before calling the byelection.
That could delay the process by a month, since the NDP can only speed up the nomination process once a byelection is called.
If McGuinty doesn't call the byelection this week, Tory won't be able to join the party when it returns to the legislature in mid-February, said Conservative caucus member Elizabeth Witmer.
Johnson's bid has already been endorsed by the local riding association executive, which means his nomination will likely be a formality.
Mike Schreiner has already been named as the Green party candidate.
