Is Mike Harris the boogeyman of the Ontario election campaign?

Whose more of scary boogeyman? Mike Harris or Dalton McGuinty?

One of the former premiers has inserted himself into the Ontario election campaign, while the other has stayed out only to have his memory constantly invoked. Amusingly, some in the media have started referring to the duo as ghosts of elections past.

On Monday, the actual Mike Harris (not the ghost) appeared on CTV News' Power Play, defending himself over Liberal party attacks against him.

"I’ve been out (of politics) 12 years. It’s a pretty desperate move on the part of a scandal-plagued government," the ex-premier said about Hudak being a called a Harris-clone.

"I think my record of over a million new jobs by cutting taxes and regulation and red tape and bringing balance budget, I think that record is a pretty good one. And I, personally, it wouldn’t bother me to be compared to that record"

[ Related: Hudak following footsteps of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris in newly unveiled platform ]

For their part, the Liberals seemed thrilled that Harris is talking. At an event in Sault Ste. Marie, leader Kathleen Wynne said that the more Harris talks, the better it his for her campaign.

"Because Mike Harris reminds all of us of what it was like during those years when he was premier; the discord in our education system, 26 million learning days lost because of the strikes, because of the conflict that was in every school," she said, according to the Toronto Star.

"So from my perspective every time Mike Harris talks about what he did, that further motivates me to make sure that doesn’t happen again because (Tory Leader) Tim Hudak is putting proposals that would do more damage, that would affect more of the employees in our schools, that would affect more children’s lives than even what Mike Harris did."

A communications expert -- who is working on one of the provincial campaigns -- says that Wynne is right. On background, he explained that as time as moved forward, the public's perception of Harris has softened -- Ontarians have forgotten about some of the massive cuts, the divisive politics and labour unrest of his era.

But, he explained, "those memories come back" the more Harris appears in this campaign.

Pollster Greg Lyle adds that the Harris brand also motivates PC supporters. His company, Innovative Research Group, recently asked respondents to indicate if they agreed or disagreed with this statement: "The PCs under Mike Harris did such a bad job running the Ontario government in the 1990s that I don't think we can take a chance on letting them run the government again."

According to data he sent Yahoo Canada News, PC supporters disagreed on mass (-73 per cent) while Liberal and NDP supporters agrees in large numbers (69 to 60 per cent respectively.)

As an interesting aside, Lyle's report notes that the Harris brand is more motivating -- both for and against -- than NDP premier Bob Rae's brand.

[ Related: Andrea Horwath’s internal troubles in Ontario indicative of NDP woes across the country ]

As much as the Liberals speak of a the Harris/Hudak connection, the PCs are talking-up the McGuinty/Wynne team evoking the memory of record debts and deficits, the gas plant fiasco and the Ornge scandal. Many a PC press release includes the phrase the "McGuinty-Wynne Liberals".

And then there's new ad with the image of the current leader and her predecessor.

Unlike Harris, however, McGunity (the man) has been invisible this election.

(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)

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