O'Toole overtakes Scheer; Saxton dares to be dull in Tory race
Hopefuls make push for party members
OTTAWA • Conservative leadership candidates are ramping up their membership sign-up efforts as a major deadline looms.
Tuesday is the last day to become a Conservative Party member and be able to vote on a new leader, to be announced May 27.
With just over two months to go in a marathon race, we take a look at some of the latest trends among the 14 hopefuls looking to replace interim leader Rona Ambrose.
O’Toole overtakes Scheer in MP endorsements
Until Friday, Saskatchewan MP and former House of Commons speaker Andrew Scheer was leading the charge on endorsements from fellow MPs.
Scheer still maintains the support of 23 MPs, but Erin O’Toole, an Ontario MP and relative latecomer to the race, eclipsed that number Friday with endorsements from MPs Martin Shields and Harold Albrecht, bringing him up to 24.
A campaign source said Albrecht is considered a big get because of his social conservative ties. A couple of weeks ago, O’Toole also announced support from Quebec heavyweight and the party’s current finance critic, Gérard Deltell.
The support appears to signal a shift, at least in Ottawa — Scheer still wins on total endorsements with 76 to O’Toole’s 45. Recent polls still put Scheer well ahead of O’Toole in terms of overall support from existing party members. Anti-Islamophobia motion: how they voted (or didn’t)
The only Conservative leadership candidate to stand up Thursday in favour of the Liberals’ controversial M-103 motion, condemning Islamophobia and asking a House of Commons committee to study the issue, was Michael Chong. Bruce Stanton, who endorsed Lisa Raitt for leader, was the only other Tory to join him.
Other MP candidates voted against, except Chris Alexander, Deepak Obhrai and Raitt, who weren’t present for the vote. Alex Nuttall, an MP who supports Maxime Bernier, was present but abstained.
Kevin O’Leary and other non-MP candidates couldn’t participate.
O’Leary accuses others of mudslinging, after slinging mud
Kevin O’Leary, in his latest fundraising pitch Thursday night, accused “nefarious characters” of trying to “sling mud” at his campaign.
O’Leary and Maxime Bernier, regarded as two of the frontrunners, have recently locked horns. O’Leary made vote-rigging allegations public last week, which sources told the National Post focus on the Bernier campaign. Then the Bernier campaign gave an affidavit to media that alleged wrongdoing in the O’Leary camp.
“I want to put an end to political BS and make politics different,” O’Leary wrote to supporters.
O’Leary didn’t mention he had used a speech in Newfoundland earlier this week to call Alberta Premier Rachel Notley a “vicious, poisonous, toxic cocktail of mediocrity,” who needs “an extreme amount of adult supervision.”
Saxton tries to avoid also-ran status with new ‘boring’ campaign
In a slick new video, former MP Andrew Saxton calls himself a “middle-aged male” who lacks “pretty hair” but is “proud” to have been labelled by the National Post, in a recent tonguein-cheek quiz, as “generic.”
By no measure a frontrunner in the race, Saxton is asking would-be supporters to look past the glitz and loudness of other candidates and sign a pledge that says, “I trust boring” — complete with a website that features a “boring hall of fame,” which features Stephen Harper and John Diefenbaker.
Lemieux continues ‘free speech’ campaign theme
Meanwhile, former MP Pierre Lemieux continues to theme most of his campaign’s messaging around free speech, bragging in a fundraising email Friday he’s met “a number of times” with controversial University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, recently under fire for rejecting the use of trans people’s preferred pronouns on campus.