Listen Up! This is the candidate to watch in the Conservative leadership race – Opinion

Hugh Mackenzie
Huntsville Doppler

A Race Worth Watching

In case you haven’t noticed, there is a leadership campaign taking place to decide who will lead the Conservatives into the next federal election. The vote will take place next month. So far it has been a ho-hum event: too many people, terrible debate formats and too many weak contenders. There are going to be a lot of also-rans.

But the leadership race is important. Prime ministers do not last forever. They come and they go. That applies to Justin Trudeau as much as anyone else. In politics, it is never a long distance between hero and zero. It is only a matter of time. That is why we should always pay attention to who is waiting in the wings. Whoever is elected Conservative leader next month will be among a mere handful of people who could become the next prime minister. That makes it kind of important to pay attention.

I don’t know many of the candidates, especially the also-rans, but I do know some of them. It is too bad, in my view, that the Conservative Party could not find a way to get rid of the also-rans before the final stretch of the leadership campaign. Maybe they just wanted their money, but there are just too darn many candidates. So, let me try to sort them out.

First, the also-rans, in my opinion, are Steven Blaney, Pierre Lemieux, Deepak Obhrai, Rick Peterson, Andrew Saxton and Brad Trost. All of them poll in the low single digits and my bet is, with the possible exception of Steven Blaney, none of them have a snowball’s chance in a warm place. They should save their hundred thousand dollar entry fee (if they still can), pack their bags and get out of the way. I will say that Deepak Obhrai, with his great sense of humour, provided me with a few light moments during an otherwise boring debate process so far. I would miss that.

That would leave eight candidates in the leadership race, a reasonable number to handle. Actually, there should be nine. Rona Ambrose is prohibited from running because she sought and won the race for interim leader. A silly rule in my opinion. The position could just as easily have ruined her chances of becoming the permanent leader. Instead she has excelled, proving that she can stand up to anyone on the other side of the House. She would have been a great candidate. A pity the pooh-bahs were so shortsighted.

The remaining eight candidates all have a kick at the can, although some less so than others. Let me talk first about Chris Alexander. I have known him since he was a five year old, picking daisies with my five year old daughter in Aggie Eibers field. I still have the picture. His parents are friends of mine and his grandfather was Mayor of Huntsville. He is also damn smart. He was a well respected diplomat and his last posting as Ambassador to Afghanistan placed him in the middle of some highly sensitive issues. He is fluently bilingual, personable and has a good grasp of the issues. His polling numbers are very low however and, quite unfairly, he, rather than Kellie Leitch, is bearing the main weight of the disastrous consequence of the misfired Conservative ploy in the last election to initiate a “barbaric cultural practices hotline”. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back in that election and, while anything is possible in politics, my gut tells me that Chris will have a very hard time winning the leadership.

I also think that Andrew Scheer, Michael Chong and Kellie Leitch will have some trouble grasping the top prize. Kellie Leitch has pretty good polling numbers but she is too polarized and she also shares the same space as Kevin O’Leary and his numbers are currently better than hers. Michael Chong is well liked but his support is slipping. Andrew Scheer, the youngest candidate at 37, is also quite popular but at this point other candidates are beginning to overshadow him and he is losing caucus support. None of these four candidates – Alexander, Chong, Leitch or Scheer – should be written off, however.

Although the leadership election is still eight weeks away, I think the cream is rising to the top in the form of four candidates. Mind you, some of it is sour cream in my view, but here they are: Maxime Bernier, Kevin O’Leary, Erin O’Toole and Lisa Raitt.

Maxime Bernier will have strong support from Quebec and he is the choice of our Member of Parliament, Tony Clement. He was a star candidate for the Harper Government and was forced to resign from Cabinet when he left classified files at the home of his then-girlfriend who had ties to the Hell’s Angels. He has since rebounded and been a very effective member of caucus. Fairly or unfairly, there will be some who will be concerned about having leaders of the two major parties in Ottawa from the province of Quebec.

At the moment, Kevin O’Leary is leading the pack and that scares me. He has captured the populist movement. He is Trump lite and he is policy lite and he is unilingual. He, like Kellie Leitch, is playing to the baser instincts of voters and that says it all for me. Nevertheless, he might win.

Lisa Raitt is a soldier in the Tory party. She works her butt off and is highly respected by the rank and file of the Conservative Party. She was the CEO of the Toronto Port Authority before entering politics and held several cabinet portfolios in the Harper Government. In opposition, she was the finance critic before she announced her candidacy for leadership. I am not sure where her numbers are at the moment, but she will finish well with party members.

Finally, the dark horse. In racing parlance, Erin O’Toole is coming up the outside stretch from behind as the race enters the final lap. His polling numbers are improving weekly and he now has more caucus support than any other candidate. O’Toole is a lawyer, a former military officer and, more recently, Minister of Veteran Affairs in the Harper Government. He is a middle-of-the-road Conservative and well liked in Tory circles. In my view, he will be very good at uniting the party and leading a formidable campaign to defeat the current government. He would be a healer and not a divider. To me, he is the one to watch.

Hugh Mackenzie

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