three years into the, typically, four-year term of the Liberal government, David Peterson called a provincial election, in which the PCs failed to improve their standing, but which resulted in the defeat of the Liberals by Rae's NDP. Mike Harris and the "Common Sense Revolution" In the 1995 election, Harris catapulted his party from third place to an election victory, running on a small government platform called the "Common Sense Revolution". The platform promised tax cuts (including 30% cuts to provincial personal income tax), and adopted wedge issues including deficit reduction, welfare cuts, the introduction of workfare, and the repeal of an employment equity law Harris characterized as "the quota law." Public opinion on the Harris government was polarized. The government was criticized on issues such as health care, the environment, education, and social policies. Strikes and protests including a 1997 teacher's strike beleaguered its first term. But it won a second majority in the 1999 general election, and held generally stable support until Harris's departure as party leader in 2002. A slide in PC support began in early 2000 according to Ipsos-Reid, when the Tories fell behind the Liberals in the public opinion polls for the first time since the 1999 election, with 36% support of those polled, compared to 42% for the Liberals and 17% for the NDP. Later in 2000, Liberal support rose to about half of those polled, while PC support remained in the low 30s. This pattern held through to the 2002 leadership campaign, when PC support rose to 37%, while the Liberals retained the support of about half of those polled. Ernie Eves: distancing the party from Harris and 2003 defeat With the resignation of Mike Harris in 2002, the PCs held a leadership election. Ernie Eves, who had been Harris's minister of finance, and who had the backing of almost all PC members of provincial parliament (MPPs), won the campaign, defeating his successor as minister of finance, Jim Flaherty. Eves was a Red Tory, unlike Harris. He'd tried to blunt some of the edges of the more radical elements of Harris's platform while in Cabinet. His distancing from the Common Sense Revolution continued after he became premier. He killed plans to sell off Hydro One and re-imposed retail price controls on electricity, capping the price at 4.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, and vowing to keep it capped until at least 2006. During the summer