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In a dramatic denouement, Crombie at first vowed defiantly to stay on as leader despite winning a disappointing 57 per cent support from the 2,400 delegates who crowded into a downtown ɫɫ�� hotel ballroom over the weekend. For a few hours, Crombie kept insisting she had eked out a second chance to lead Ontario’s third-place Liberals.

But only just: With a sizable 43 per cent calling for a leadership review, Crombie emerged a wounded politician leading a party still licking its wounds.

“Let’s be clear,” she said gamely from the stage before slipping away. “It is not the number I wanted but it is not the finish line for me.”

With questions swirling about her survivability, Crombie refused to take questions from reporters, cancelling a scheduled media encounter after leaving the stage. But when she failed to rally all of caucus behind her over the next few hours, reporters received another update from her:

The game was up. She was, in fact, finished.

There would be no new beginning. The wounded leader had ripped off the bandage.

Still haunted by the doom and gloom of last winter’s election — when she failed to win over the province’s voters, or even gain a seat for herself — Crombie fell well short of the strong majority support she wanted (and needed) to put the doubters to rest.

Her initial instinct was to play the party unity card: Liberals were poorly placed to face disunity, distractions and disruptions from a third straight leadership race after three consecutive election defeats, she argued.

“We still believe that a leadership race at this moment would do more harm than good for our party,” Crombie insisted after huddling with the party executive in the aftermath of the vote.

“I have the support I need to continue.”

It was wishful thinking. Now Liberals will get the leadership race that so many — though by no means all — wished for.

Crombie’s team and senior Liberals had been hoping for a percentage result in the mid-60s as a decent show of support in tough times. But her pitch didn’t try to win hearts and minds with an inspirational vision for the future, trying instead to explain away the setbacks of the past.

Crombie’s failure to win a seat in Mississauga, as much as her province-wide defeat, has haunted her to this day. Which is why the party landed on a number that left it in limbo.

Despite her initial defiance, Crombie clearly lacked the stomach to press forward while looking over her shoulder, facing second-guessing from within her own party and endless taunting from her Progressive Conservative and NDP rivals.

Now, with no obviously electable alternative waiting in the wings, the party is back where it started after its 2022 election defeat. Speculation about a successor will centre on Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, the political apparition that refuses to fade away even after being dumped from the federal cabinet when Mark Carney took over as prime minister.

Ever the spoiler, Erskine-Smith undermined Crombie publicly with email blasts and personal outreach. And he lurked conspicuously outside the voting area on the weekend to waylay delegates.

He seemed to be on Crombie’s mind when she tried to rally the party in her keynote speech. She won loud cheers from delegates when taking a veiled shot at the irrepressible Erskine-Smith:

“It’s not about ego, not entitlement, not personal ambition,” she said in an applause line that connected with the crowd.

Despite her apologies and excuses, the die was cast for Crombie on election night last February, in her first and only campaign as party leader. It’s not just that she couldn’t win over the province, but she couldn’t win over the Mississauga power base she’d boasted about as its former mayor.

Ironically, that critical challenge of winning a seat, which proved to be Crombie’s undoing, could also be a major obstacle for Erskine-Smith. He has no obvious path to the provincial legislature before the next Ontario election, expected in 2029, leaving him an outsider with a reputation for flitting between federal and provincial politics.

Existing members of the Liberal caucus would seem to have a head start, notably former leadership candidate Adil Shamji, who mounted a strong campaign of his own in 2023 before throwing his support to Crombie. Another ɫɫ�� MPP, Stephanie Bowman, who came close to running last time before joining Crombie’s camp, could also run.

Ottawa MPP John Fraser, who has served as interim leader and Liberal house leader, might also make a bid after so many years serving as a stand-in. In fact, it fell to Fraser to introduce Crombie to delegates on Saturday before her keynote speech, prompting him to talk about the party’s dark days after its 2018 fall from power.

“We needed a spark,” he mused. In Crombie, “We found that spark.”

The problem is that she failed to light the province on fire in the Feb. 27 vote. And she failed to keep the flame burning for Liberal delegates at this weekend’s vote.

Now she is the third Liberal leader to go quietly into the night after election day.