{"id":782981,"date":"2026-07-06T02:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T02:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/782981\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T02:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T02:34:08","slug":"ajax-mpp-drops-out-of-ontario-liberal-leadership-race-cp24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/782981\/","title":{"rendered":"Ajax MPP drops out of Ontario Liberal leadership race \u2013 CP24"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Ontario Liberal MPP Rob Cerjanec has dropped his bid to become the next leader of the party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">In a statement posted on social media on Sunday, Cerjanec, who represents the riding of Ajax, said he made the \u201cdifficult decision\u201d to suspend his campaign following \u201cconsiderable reflection and conversations\u201d with his family and supporters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The rookie legislator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cp24.com\/politics\/queens-park\/2026\/05\/28\/ontario-liberal-caucus-member-rob-cerjanec-enters-party-leadership-race\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.cp24.com\/politics\/queens-park\/2026\/05\/28\/ontario-liberal-caucus-member-rob-cerjanec-enters-party-leadership-race\/\">entered the leadership race in May<\/a> with a pledge to rebuild the party and campaign on affordability measures and improving the education and health-care systems.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">In his Sunday statement, Cerjanec said he entered the race because he believed that Ontarians \u201cdeserved a government that can create opportunity, strengthen public services and help people get ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cTo everyone who volunteered, donated, encouraged me and believed in this campaign: thank you. Your confidence has been deeply humbling. This campaign is ending but the work that inspired it will continue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">There are four remaining leadership candidates: former MP Navdeep Bains, Toronto MPP Lee Fairclough, housing advocate Eric Lombardi and former political staffer Dylan Marando.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Party members will vote between Nov. 9 and 20 and the next leader will be announced on Nov. 21.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">With files from The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ontario Liberal MPP Rob Cerjanec has dropped his bid to become the next leader of the party. In&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[712,49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-782981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}