TORONTO – Anyone who has heard of Steven Del Duca during this election campaign probably knows that he has two daughters in public school, two elderly parents who want to grow old at home, and that Saturday mornings include shopping for his family.
Weaving personal touches into speeches is a tried and true political tactic, but the Ontario Liberal leader says his politics come from his personal life.
“Family is really the center of everything … so I guess it’s a very natural lens for me to see these issues,” he said in a recent interview.
Del Duca’s focus on home care comes not only from his 83-year-old Italian father and 80-year-old Scottish mother, but also from his grandparents, all of whom lived beyond the 80’s – one to 97 – and they stayed. in their own homes.
Education policy is important to Del Duca as the father of two daughters, 14-year-old Talia and 11-year-old Grace, but he also mentions a teacher who kept him on the right track while he was adrift in his last year of high school.
By then, he was already actively involved in politics and had little interest in what the school curriculum had to offer in the social sciences, and the professor was worried that his grades might not take him to college.
So he developed two big research projects that he could do as independent studies and got the director to sign him.
“I loved it because it gave me the opportunity to take what I was actually doing, merge it with what I was reading and learning, and kind of run with it,” says Del Duca.
“I don’t know how it would have turned out otherwise.”
Thirty years later, he faces much bigger projects: the Prime Minister and the rebuilding of the Ontario Liberals four years after his fall that saw them lose official party status.
One of Del Duca’s oldest friends, Anthony Martin, has known him since they were both in 3rd grade, and he’s not surprised to see him applying for the best job in the province. Martin says his friend was always well-informed about current events of his age, but once he was bitten by political error, that was all.
“He said he wanted to be prime minister, because he thought it was where you could do better and make more changes in people’s lives,” Martin said.
Del Duca’s interest in politics awoke at the age of 14, when his older sister gave him “The Rainmaker,” the autobiography of legendary Liberal organizer Keith Davey, for Christmas.
Since then, she has asked her sister why she settled for that gift, a peculiar selection for a young teenager, and “she doesn’t remember what it took to get that specific book.”
Regardless, Del Duca was hooked. Then, a few months later, he was released when a cousin invited him to a nomination meeting. It turned out to be a hotly contested race, with a starter being challenged by a federal liberal nomination.
“I felt the electricity in the room,” he says.
Later that year was the 1988 election and Del Duca volunteered for the Liberals, knocking on the door of voters who found a 15-year-old who wanted to talk to them about free trade on the other side.
At 48, Del Duca still enjoys talking and has developed a particular style. During the campaign, he looks directly at the camera, uttering his words in a measured cadence that usually comes from reading prepared comments.
Except there’s no teleprompter in sight.
Del Duca says that is partly due to the fact that he was very practical with the development of the platform, but the seed was planted at his own nomination meeting in 2012.
He was being replaced by Greg Sorbara, who was retiring. In fact, Del Duca had written speeches for Sorbara, although he avoided the notes.
“(That) drove me crazy,” says Del Duca. “I would say, ‘Steven, this is such a beautiful speech. I’m not using it. “
Prior to the nomination meeting, Sorbara told Del Duca not to use a written speech, but a single page of vignettes to “frame the mind.”
He was not sure to speak out of hand in front of so many people, and he brought both his speech and his dotted page to the banquet hall. But after sitting in the parking lot and pondering, he left his speech in the car.
“It went well,” Del Duca says. “That was very good advice that Greg gave me … Even if you go back to the car later, or if you go back to the office and you think, I did “., ‘okay. You connect with the audience much, much better.”
He would spend almost four years as Minister of Transport and a few months as Minister of Economic Development.
Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi, who served in the cabinet with Del Duca, says he is someone who was always prepared and may disagree with others cordially. The two have known each other since they were together in the Liberals’ youth, and Naqvi says personally that Del Duca is a devout family man.
Del Duca’s little brother died in a car accident in 2018, and Naqvi says he was impressed with how Del Duca coped with the tragedy.
“There were times, of course, that he was fragile, but he was also there for his parents, who lost their son,” Naqvi says.
“She was there for her sister-in-law, who lost her husband. She was there for her niece and nephews, who lost their father and, of course, also supported her family. he was incredibly impressed with his strength, his composure and his resilience. “
Del Duca was elected party leader a few days before the first confinement of COVID-19.
March 7, 2020 was not, in retrospect, the best time for a mass meeting, and the timing was especially bad for Del Duca, who had to spend the next two years rebuilding his disastrous party. 2018 elections showing up and running for voters.
But the new Liberal leader was one of the last things on the minds of voters when they faced the devastating effects of the pandemic, and it has left Del Duca still quite unknown, said Chris Cochrane, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto. Scarborough.
“It has made life difficult for him,” he said.
During last week’s debate, Del Duca seemed like someone who had a good understanding of politics, but when it comes to a unique and easily identifiable charisma, progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford overcame him, Cochrane said.
“Doug Ford has a presence, a way of talking, mannerisms, everything about him, that sends a message automatically, no matter what he tells people who want to vote for (him) that he’s one of them,” he said. .
“As soon as you see (Ford) and hear him speak, it’s unique to him … Jean Chretien, for example, also had it in the past. Del Duca doesn’t have that. “
But those who know him say he has a good sense of humor, exchanging jokes with his father and proposing self-critical comments.
He has also tried to cultivate an image that could be related, often appearing in public in a sneaker suit and abandoning his characteristic black-rimmed glasses after undergoing laser eye surgery just before the campaign.
“I thought it was easier than trying to grow my hair,” he jokes.