{"id":785386,"date":"2026-07-07T05:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T05:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/785386\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T05:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T05:26:10","slug":"rob-cerjanec-bows-out-of-ontario-liberal-party-leadership-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/785386\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Cerjanec bows out of Ontario Liberal Party leadership race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\" alt=\"Text to Speech Icon\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article<\/p>\n<p>Estimated 1 minute<\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n<p>The race to become the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party is narrowing, as one contestant has decided to bow out.<\/p>\n<p>Rob Cerjanec, who represents Ajax for the party in the legislature, says he has made the difficult decision to suspend his campaign after speaking with family, supporters and colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>His caucus colleague Lee Fairclough, who represents Etobicoke-Lakeshore, former federal cabinet minister Navdeep Bains, housing advocate Eric Lombardi and former political staffer Dylan Marando are still in the running.<\/p>\n<p>Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith had at one point intended to run for the provincial leadership but has decided against it after losing a provincial nomination race, though he still plans on resigning his federal seat.<\/p>\n<p>Party members can vote online between Nov. 9 and 20, and the winner will be announced Nov. 21.<\/p>\n<p>The new leader will replace Bonnie Crombie, who officially resigned earlier this year following lukewarm support in a vote at the party&#8217;s annual general meeting in the fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 1 minute The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-785386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785386","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=785386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}