TORONTO — He is a wealthy businessman whose favorite political targets are “elites” he describes as drinking champagne “with their pinkies up in the air.” He hates government, but is running to lead one with a $121.7-billion budget, confident he will root out waste with his well-honed business acumen.

And he has a history of publicly attacking the media and public figures he considers disloyal.

It’s not hard to see why Doug Ford, the golden-haired former football player fighting to be the next premier of Ontario, has been compared to President Trump.

running to lead one with a $121.7-billion budget, confident he will root out waste with his well-honed business acumen.

And he has a history of publicly attacking the media and public figures he considers disloyal.

It’s not hard to see why Doug Ford, the golden-haired former football player fighting to be the next premier of Ontario, has been compared to President Trump.

“You’ve seen jobs lost — 300,000 manufacturing jobs — in 15 years,” Mr. Ford said at a packed rally in a windowless hall in a Toronto suburb last week. “Oh, we’re bringing them back, don’t you worry.”

Mr. Ford is the older brother of the deceased former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who made headlines around the world for smoking crack cocaine while in office. He is now expanding their family’s populist, right-wing style of campaigning into Ontario, the economic heart and cradle of Canada, threatening to alter the country’s socially and economically liberal politics.

Mr. Ford, who took over the reins of the Progressive Conservative party in March, had seemed like a shoo-in. In recent weeks, the polls have shifted, giving an equal chance to Andrea Horwath of the province’s traditionally third-place New Democratic Party, which is promising the opposite of Mr. Ford — more social programs, paid for by tax increases on the rich.

“It’s going to be a shootout in the end,” said Darrell Bricker, chief executive of the polling firm Ipsos Public Affairs. “It will come down to who comes out to vote.”

But Mr. Ford’s campaign is opening a door for other populists. And if he were elected on June 7 to run the provincial government, he would be in position to act as a de facto opposition leader to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“Ontario is like New York and California combined,” said Nelson Wiseman, a professor of Canadian politics at the University of Toronto. “Because the province is so powerful, whoever becomes premier is a major player in the federal scene.”

For the past 15 years, Ontario has been run by the centrist Liberal Party, which introduced sweeping climate change legislation, gender-neutral health cards and driver’s licenses, and an increase to the minimum wage.