Mulroney a Tory with centrist view

Suggest to Caroline Mulroney that she lacks the political experience of her rivals in the Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership race — or that trying to win her first seat in any legislature, a party leadership and a premier’s office in less than five months sounds just a bit crazy — and she will tell you that she brings a “different kind of experience” to the table: “I’ve been working for 20 years in law and business, I started a charity, and I’ve been doing that while raising (four) kids,” as she told CBC the day of her campaign launch.

But successful professionals (and parents) enter politics all the time. The most unique experience Mulroney can claim is growing up at 24 Sussex Drive, and that might have kept some people out of the spotlight for good.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was constantly at war with the media, and his wife and kids were treated as fair game. CTV morning host Ben Mulroney, Caroline’s younger brother, recalls with particular annoyance his mother’s work on cystic fibrosis.

“Mila Mulroney has found a suitable charity: cystic fibrosis, an awful disease whose child victims are both blameless and photogenic,” Susan Riley wrote in a 1998 book called Political Wives: Lives of the Saints.

“There is something patently insincere about Mila, something people sense even through a television screen.”

In fact, the Toronto Star reported, Mila was speaking almost daily with sufferers of the disease and with bereaved parents.

Frank magazine’s “Deflower Caroline Mulroney contest,” which Brian Mulroney characterized as “an incitement to gang-rape my daughter” was one particularly brutal example.

But news coverage was also tone-deaf: “She must have developed a decided interest in guys by now,” Hubert Bauch mused in the Toronto Star in 1991. “And from all appearances, she’d have no problem getting noticed.” Caroline was 17.

“I’m more reserved in general as a result of it and I’m a more private person,” says Mulroney, now 43, in an interview at her tackedtogether midtown Toronto campaign office.

She suggests dealing with media is the steepest learning curve she’s navigating.

Brian Mulroney recalls that Caroline never seemed bothered by the bad press, and credits her mother. “Mila’s attitude always was … ‘consider the source, and let’s move on,’ ” he says. “‘We don’t have time to waste with these vile personal attacks by mediocrities.’ ”

“My mother did a tremendous job,” Caroline echoes. “I wanted to hear from her whether she thought (entering politics) was even something that I should consider because of the age of my children. She was very encouraging.”

Mulroney paints herself as a classic families-first centrist compassionate conservative — someone who believes “government should be the last resort,” but nevertheless “has a role in helping our most vulnerable.”

This week, she proposed policies to train unlicensed daycare operators, review plans for more subsidized spaces; address problems in Ontario’s adoption system; and improve access to palliative care. She opposes the carbon tax, but has a moderate line on sex-ed.

Despite her high-profile childhood, Caroline has flown mostly under the radar for the past 20 years.

Even her 2000 wedding to Andrew Lapham was fairly quiet.

After studying government at Harvard, Mulroney moved to New York in 1996 and into investment banking at Bear Stearns.

Next was New York University’s law school, where she graduated in 2001 and then worked as associate director of the university’s Pollack Center for Law & Business.

After she was called to the bar, she joined Shearman & Sterling. She loved the work, despite the “100-hour weeks,” but says the lifestyle was ultimately unsustainable.

Mulroney and Lapham relocated to Toronto, where Lapham is chairman of Blackstone Capital. Mulroney completed the coursework for the Ontario bar, she says, but “then we found out we were expecting our fourth child.”

At 33, she shifted back to business. She’s on leave from investment advisers BloombergSen. With her sisters-in-law, Mulroney co-founded the Shoebox Project, a charity that provides what she calls “little luxuries” to homeless women around the holidays.

Those who’ve known Mulroney for a long time often describe her as “empathetic” and a “quick study.”

While opponent Christine Elliott’s decade of experience at Queen’s Park was far from triumphant, it might prove more compelling to members desperate for a win.

Still, assuming Caroline Mulroney manages to hold York-Simcoe for the Tories, the worst she can do is lose — something many very famous Canadian politicians have done before, including her father.