Matthew Rae is headed back to Queen’s Park with a second straight one-sided victory in the Perth-Wellington riding.
Rae easily cruised to his second electoral win Thursday night, picking up over 18,000 votes to handily beat Liberal challenger Ashley Fox by nearly 8,000 votes. NDP candidate Jason Davis finished a distant third with just over 5,000 votes.
Following his victory speech to a small crowd of supporters, Rae said that despite the large margin of victory, it doesn’t change the job in front of him.
“The message that we were running on, protecting Ontario, is what I was hearing at the door,” he said. “It was around tariffs and concerns about affordability and jobs. The vast majority of people who work in Perth and Wellington work in auto manufacturing, manufacturing in general and agriculture – both heavily dependent on trade with the US. So those concerns were coming up ever since Donald Trump won his election, so I know that was a big focus of the PC party and our premier going into the election. He wanted to provide that blueprint on how we can protect Ontario and continue to make those investments.”
Marking his second electoral win, Rae said the lessons learned from his first term as Perth-Wellington’s MPP will be to pace himself and truly dedicate himself to the intricate differences that make up the riding.
“There are some great communities that make up this riding, and they make my job easier to go to Queen’s Park and highlight those communities,” he said. “Obviously we have needs locally but it’s our municipal partners – the mayors, councillors and the people – that contribute to the work and help me do my job at Queen’s Park.”
The loss for Fox came as a happy shock, given that she finished in second this time rather the third place finish she earned in 2022. But in light of the outcome, she had a warning to the re-elected Rae: she will be watching.
“I think our MPP should be concerned about how much attention I have put in over the last two years, and will continue to hold Rae accountable,” she said.
For Davis, he said finishing in third place came as a surprise for him.
“When polling came out that had the Liberals ahead of us, it was interesting to see since the NDP finished in second place in the last two elections,” he said. “I feel like a lot of people tried to vote strategically, which doesn’t make sense to me, as the idea of anyone but Conservative is just going to end up having us in the same spot in four years from now.”
Green Party candidate Ian Morton said a goal of his was to finish better than fourth place and increase the vote share, and while he couldn’t accomplish that he was still pleased with how he and the party showed.
“The plan all along was to show people there was another alternative and to increase support, something I believe we did,” he said. “I can’t match the donations and funds the other parties can spend, so that is something we are really going to work hard on over the next four years.”
Prior to the election, Doug Ford made it known he was looking for a new mandate and more seats in the legislature. While that number went up only slightly, Rae said he believes the message Ontario voters sent was clear: they want a Conservative government to lead them forward into an uncertain future.
“As I mentioned in my remarks this evening, this is the greatest existential crisis our country is facing since our founding in my opinion,” he said, talking about Trump’s actions. “Ensuring we have a strong, stable mandate to outlast President Trump, which we have. I know there were some people that didn’t vote for me but I’m now everyone’s MPP and I will do my utmost to represent them at Queen’s Park and ensure their voices are heard.”
As for his priorities now that the election is in the rear view mirror?
“I’ll be in the office tomorrow in Stratford, meeting with some of our businesses and chambers of commerce about Trump’s tariffs,” he said.
The unofficial results, with 59 of 59 polls counted, were:
Rae with 20,752
Fox with 12,547
Davis with 5,580
Morton with 3,299
Montgomery with 1,284
Zenuh with 458
Smink with 229.
- with files from Rob Ross/Stratford Today