Ciccone negotiated with CAQ before landing with Liberals
Premier Philippe Couillard said he is not concerned that his candidate in Marquette, Enrico Ciccone, flirted with the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) before finally deciding to run for the Liberals in the October election.
“This is not so rare,” Couillard told reporters in Montreal. “We see this regularly. Politics has changed in many ways. People look at one option, then another.
“The good news is the result of all this is that, having looked around, he chose the Liberal Party of Quebec.”
Various media reported Thursday that Ciccone, a former hockey player and sports commentator, had offered his services to the CAQ before turning to the Liberals because they could guarantee him a win in the riding of Marquette.
To let him run, the Liberals booted 24-year veteran MNA François Ouimet out the door, infuriating voters in the riding and many other Liberals who felt he was treated in a shabby manner.
According to the reports, Ciccone met with CAQ party president Stéphane Le Bouyonnec in April to discuss running in the riding of Blainville in the Laurentians where he lives. The riding, however, already has a CAQ MNA and was not available.
The CAQ then offered Ciccone another riding, Vaudreuil, held by the Liberals. A win there would be much more difficult. Ciccone refused the offer, turning then to the Liberals who came up with Marquette.
Ciccone has since said it was the CAQ that approached him first.
Scrambling and with only a week to go before the election launch, the Liberals had to tell Ouimet he would not be allowed to run again despite a promise Couillard made last May in a one-on-one meeting.
That sparked a crisis in the riding. Furious, 17 out of 18 members of the Marquette Liberal riding executive, including president Patrick Carroll, announced they would be resigning the day Ouimet’s term is over.
“In my DNA, one’s word is all we have,” Carroll said in an interview Friday in reference to Couillard changing his mind. “You promise someone something and then, boom, you change your mind.
“It’s not a human way to treat people. He didn’t even get a call from the premier.”
Carroll added that the executive was further irritated when it was not invited to Ciccone’s launch news conference on Thursday, which was attended by Couillard.
Carroll confirmed he and his executive will be sitting out the campaign and not helping Ciccone, who has said he will create a new team.
The Marquette crisis took another turn Thursday when other reports surfaced saying Ouimet should not have been surprised he had been turfed because there had been tension between him and the party for about six months.
A person had even been authorized to go tell Ouimet the party would want his riding.
The report said the party thought Ouimet had been neglecting local issues and the anglophone community. It was also believed Ouimet was spending too much time angling to become speaker of the legislature now that Jacques Chagnon is retiring. Ouimet is currently the deputy speaker.
“I don’t want to get involved in that smear campaign,” Ouimet said in a short interview Friday. “I want to take the high road out.”