Louis-Hébert, a byelection that became a train wreck for the Liberals and CAQ

Seen as a dress rehearsal for 2018, race fell apart with resignations and accusations

QUEBEC For sheer political antics and pratfalls, the byelection campaign in Louis-Hébert has been hard to beat.

In fact, one theory about the roller-coaster campaign to replace Sam Hamad — who resigned in April under a cloud of ethical questions — has been that the whole thing was cursed from the get go.

Sure, the race started in the conventional way in September. There was Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault holding an outdoor news conference in the suburban Quebec City riding to introduce someone who seemed to be a model candidate, retired banker Normand Sauvageau.

Pumped by polls showing the CAQ creeping up on the governing Liberals, Legault urged the people to use their votes in Monday’s byelection to signal their unhappiness with the Liberal government, which has been in office close to 14 years.

Not to be outdone, along came the Liberals with their candidate, former manufacturer’s association president Éric Tétrault. The Liberals urged Louis-Hébert voters to stick with them because they say they know what needs to be done to hold the fort on the economy.

In short, as much as a byelection can do this, the race was supposed to be a kind of dress rehearsal for the 2018 general election. Then everything went to pieces. In what is a first in provincial politics, both the Liberal and CAQ candidates pulled out of the race on the same afternoon, within hours of each other, and for about the same reasons: allegations of psychological harassment in the workplaces in their previous lives.

Other bits of odd information started to surface. Before leaving, the CAQ candidate admitted he had voted for Hamad several times in the past and considered him not a bad fellow.

Also before leaving, Tétrault confirmed he had been approached by the CAQ before the Liberals, a comment confirmed by Legault who then promptly revealed Tétrault had had lots of nasty things to say, in private to him, about the Liberals and Premier Philippe Couillard before slipsliding across the street to join them.

Speaking of cross-pollination, a report then emerged that replacement Liberal candidate Ihssane El Ghernati, who was Hamad’s riding employee for the 14 years he was in office, once sat on the executive of the old Action démocratique du Québec party, which is today the CAQ.

The CAQ rapidly tagged her a Liberal spy. She is in fact, the eighth person the Liberals approached for the election. The others refused to run.

And then the Parti Québécois candidate in the election, environmentalist Normand Beauregard, revealed he used to have a membership card in Québec solidaire.

Weird enough for you? Wait, there’s more. After losing its first candidate, the CAQ returned with a new one, Geneviève Guilbault, the former spokesperson for the provincial coroner’s office.

Did we mention that, in 2006, Guilbault was press aide to former Liberal cabinet minister Jacques Dupuis?

She is also expecting a baby in December, which became a campaign theme.

In an interview last week on Radio-Canada, Guilbault said her adversaries — she gives no names — had launched a whisper campaign against her, saying that because she will be a new mother soon, she won’t have enough time to devote to the demanding job of representing the riding.

“I have learned some of my adversaries are trying to discourage the people of Louis-Hébert from voting for me because I am pregnant,” Guilbault said.

Her adversaries El Ghernati and Beauregard rapidly denied in any way making Guilbault’s status an issue, but it was yet another twist in a campaign that has dominated politics in the provincial capital for weeks.

Wait, there’s still more. Nathalie Normandeau, another Liberal and a cabinet minister in the Charest years, decided she too would settle a few scores with the Liberals. Facing charges of conspiracy, corruption, fraud and breach of trust, Normandeau carpet-bombed her old party on her radio show.

“Don’t trust Philippe Couillard and his government,” she blurted out Tuesday. “It’s time for another government in Quebec. I feel like telling you we need a caquiste government in the National Assembly and we need it in a hurry.”

How will things go Monday? Given the riding ’s past — Hamad won the riding by 8,677 votes in 2014 — the election that should have been a Liberal cakewalk now has turned into a crapshoot.

The radio pundits here — and there are lots of those — say it’s a two-way race between the Liberals and the CAQ. Polls show the CAQ dominates the overall political spectrum in the Quebec City region.

After the vote, the loser traditionally says it was just a byelection and meant little.

But at the symbolic level, it’s important because it could reveal that sitting Liberals in this region (and maybe in the province) are in danger.

The CAQ has lowballed expectations saying they realize Louis-Hébert is a Liberal fortress, but Journal de Montréal blogger Claude Villeneuve put it this way:

“If they want to show they are competitive enough to beat the Liberal Party in 2018, LouisHébert (without Hamad and with a bad Liberal campaign) is the kind of riding the CAQ needs to win.”