Décarie set to enter Conservative race as ‘so-con’ candidate
Quebec organizer was deputy chief of staff to Harper
OTTAWA — The social conservative wing of the Conservative Party looks set to have at least one flag-bearer in the leadership race, as former party staffer Richard Décarie is collecting signatures and has a network forming behind him.
“All the so-cons are mobilizing behind me because I’m the only candidate who is running that actually represents their values,” Décarie said on Tuesday.
The party’s social conservative wing is a large, energized voting bloc in leadership races and could well be a kingmaker in a close race, given the ranked ballot system.
In 2017, Andrew Scheer received heavy down-ballot support from voters who backed other social conservative candidates, a significant factor in his come-from-behind victory over Maxime Bernier.
Décarie, an experienced Quebec organizer and former deputy chief of staff to Stephen Harper from 2003 to 2005, said he expects to enter the race soon and already has a team in place.
His campaign manager is
Russ Kuykendall, who managed Tanya Granic Allen’s 2018 Ontario PC leadership campaign and was deputy campaign manager for Brad Trost’s 2017 federal Conservative leadership campaign.
Mike Patton, who handled Trost’s communications in 2017, will be doing the same for Décarie.
Trost himself will be campaign chair, meaning he’ll quarterback fundraising.
Trost finished fourth in the 2017 race, which had 14 candidates on the final ballot.
Despite the high entry fee ($300,000 in total, with $100,000 of that a refundable deposit), Décarie said he doesn’t expect money to be an issue, and is in the process of collecting enough signatures to formally enter the race.
“That’s a big challenge, because the bar has been set pretty high,” Décarie said about the signatures. Candidates need 1,000 to enter the race — spread across 30 ridings in at least seven provinces or territories — and will need 3,000 in total to get onto the final ballot.
Décarie is francophone, which he said should help him in a race where there are questions about the bilingualism of other candidates.
But he said it was the potential candidacy of a Quebecker, Jean Charest, that first motivated him to enter the race.
(Charest announced on Tuesday that he would not be seeking the leadership.)