The latest polling figures from Mainstreet Research (25 February) show support for Dawn Gallagher Murphy and Chris Ballard essentially frozen with a 4 to 5 point gap between them.

Without NDP and Green voters lending their support to Ballard on Thursday, Dawn Gallagher Murphy will be returned as Newmarket-Aurora’s MPP for the next four years.

It pains me to say it.

Machiavellian

I have never come across a candidate for public office who is so Machiavellian and so deeply flawed. Her own former employees denounce her as a fraud.

Indeed, Gallagher Murphy would have been in the dock this very morning at the Ontario Labour Relations Board had her former office manager, Teena Bogner, not settled her action against the MPP and signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement which buys her silence.

Gallagher Murphy’s acidic and unforgiving temperament would have been on full display.

Instead, we see a different version. A few days ago, speaking to the homelessness charity "Inn from the Cold" she promised money after the election:

“I am looking forward… coming on the other side of the election… making an announcement that will help finish the funding for that Inn from the Cold. So stay tuned to that great coming announcement.”

Why the dance of the seven veils?

Why didn’t she make the announcement before the election was called? 

Buying Votes. 

It is all part of a pattern.

Buying votes. Whatever the cost.

An Orwellian Gallagher Murphy last year praised Ford’s Finance Minister, Peter Bethlenfalvy, for “maintaining a path to a balanced Budget” while the provincial Treasury loses billions in revenue from axing licence plate fees and handing out, on the eve of the election, cheques for $200 a head for every man, woman and child in Ontario, regardless of their income.

It was a flat-rate giveaway. Financed by borrowed money.

Deficit Financing

Ford is now promising a $100 billion tunnel under the 401 but who is paying for this fantasy?  With no plans to raise taxes, deficit financing is the only answer. This is what the Progressive Conservatives now believe in.

The “balanced budget” for so long a loadstar to true-blue conservatives is out the window. Now everything goes on the Provincial credit card, paying billions in interest every year. Interest payments that dwarf spending on higher education and on the entire justice system.

And all this was before the threat of Trump’s tariffs.

Don’t expect a critique of any of this from Dawn Gallaher Murphy.

That is way above her pay grade.

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Update at 3.30pm: From Newmarket Today: Newmarket-Aurora incumbent under fire for allegedly campaigning at charity event

MainStreet Research: Projected share of the vote in Newmarket-Aurora