National Post (National Edition)
Tories have choice of two very different so-cons
OTTAWA • Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan are frequently lumped together in the Conservative leadership race as the two social conservatives who’ve qualified for the final ballot. That oversimplification of their two campaigns risks overlooking significant distinctions that could affect the outcome of the party’s leadership vote, say party insiders.
Papering over the differences between their candidacies also obscures an important debate over how the party can keep social conservatives in the fold while still growing its appeal for the general electorate. The leadership race has sharply contrasted Sloan’s more pugnacious approach, throwing so-con bombs thrown at Liberal targets, with Lewis’s more reserved social conservative message seemingly designed more to persuade than to attack. That has implications for who it is that wins the race, which is expected to pivot on how Conservative party members prioritize their choices on the party’s ranked ballot, and therefore what kind of voters even the weaker candidates attract.
“Derek is making much more of a populist social conservative approach,” said Brad Trost, a former Conservative MP and leadership candidate who ran as a social conservative.
“He’s the anti-establishment social conservative, Leslyn is more of a consensus social conservative. That’s the way I would look at it.”
Trost himself surprised the 2017 Conservative leadership race, when support from social conservatives boosted him to fourth out of 14 candidates on the final ballot. Similarly, social conservative candidate Pierre Lemieux had practically no profile but still finished seventh, ahead of much better known candidates Lisa Raitt, Steven Blaney and Chris Alexander.
The party’s constitution requires a ranked ballot for leadership races. When Trost and Lemieux were eliminated, their down-ballot support — their supporters’ next choices — flowed to Andrew Scheer and was a big factor in Scheer eking out a razorthin win over the more libertarian-minded Maxime Bernier.
This time around, a big benefit for social conservative groups was that the party significantly hiked the race’s entry requirements to try to keep the field small. Social conservatives have mastered the art of selling memberships and fundraising, and their preferred candidates now represent half of the final four on the ballot.
If the vote, planned for August, comes down to a tight neck-and-neck race between Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole, as looks increasingly likely, the differences between the support bases of Lewis and Sloan could be crucial for the final result. It depends on what kind of voters Lewis and Sloan attract, and how those voters choose to order their ballot.
The public usually has heard from Conservative social conservative leadership candidates during this race only when they’ve caused controversy. Sloan, a Conservative MP, most recently was making news for appearing to question the loyalty of Canada’s chief public health officer, Theresa Tam. Richard Décarie provoked outrage in January when he went on TV and claimed being gay is a choice. (Décarie was later disqualified by the party for unstated reasons; most of his organizers subsequently went to Sloan’s campaign).
But Lewis, a Toronto lawyer who immigrated to Canada from Jamaica when she was five, and went on to start her own commercial law firm, largely has stayed out of the headlines.
Lewis, a black, evangelical Christian, has never held political office. She’s been upfront about her anti-abortion stance and personal opposition to same-sex marriage, but has not sought out controversy. Instead she’s run a quietly effective campaign, raising more money than Sloan in the first quarter ($447,646 to Sloan’s $410,263.)
“In a lot of ways, she’s frankly one of the more interesting people to enter federal politics in some time,” said Sean Speer, a policy researcher and former Stephen Harper adviser who’s urged the party to keep social conservatives in the fold. “You know, it’s funny that she hasn’t gotten more attention than she has so far. Here’s the only woman in the race, a visible minority, and from what I understand, quite an inspiring story of a first generation immigrant.”
A big reason Lewis hasn’t received more attention is self-imposed: her campaign rejected almost all media interviews until early March. But it’s also likely due to the fact Lewis is just less sensational and more nuanced in her comments, especially compared to Sloan, even though both have attracted support from social conservative groups.
For example, here’s what Lewis told a CBC interviewer when asked about Décarie’s claim that being gay is a choice: “When I look at the struggles of some of my gay friends, being estranged from your parents from coming out — I wouldn’t think that they would choose that themselves ... I witnessed the pain that they’ve gone through.”
She says her own view is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but she respects opposing views and wouldn’t seek to impose her own in government.
Lewis opposes the Liberals’ proposed legislation to ban gay conversion therapy because she worries it would criminalize conversations about sexuality with parents and pastors. However, she also says she also opposes forcing someone to take therapy they don’t want to take. When she discusses policy, she stakes out her position carefully and acknowledges there are two sides to the debate.
Compare that to the fiery intensity of Sloan’s campaign emails, which regularly mention the proposed conversion therapy ban as a Liberal attack on families: “At the heart of the radical left lies a burning desire to destroy the family, because once the family is gone, nothing stands between individuals and those who wish to exert total control over them,” Sloan wrote on March 19. “When we talk about the culture war, that is what is at stake. It’s life or death. It’s freedom or slavery.”
Speer said Lewis’ campaign may be a test of his theory that social conservatism is seen as political poison not because Canadians are against it en masse, but because of the polarizing way it’s sometimes presented by its most visible proponents.
“If you advance social-conservative ideas poorly, then they’re going to do poorly, right?” Speer said. “Derek Sloan obviously is not going to have broad-based appeal, but it’s not even clear that’s his objective. He seems more committed to being a kind of provocateur as an end in itself ... I don’t know if Lewis is the right vehicle to advance a social-conservative point of view. But it seems to me if there’s going to be one that resonates, it’s going to follow the approach that she’s pursuing.”
On abortion, Lewis has published her policy views to demonstrate she has no “hidden agenda,” a term she says is a weapon used against Conservatives. She says she’d ban sex-selective abortion, criminalize “coerced” abortions, increase funding for pregnancy centres that counsel alternatives to abortion and end Canada’s international funding for abortion services.
Lewis has strong backing from anti-abortion groups. The largest of these during Tory leadership races is the Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), but there are many other smaller groups who are also effective in signing up members and raising money. For these groups, policy is the most important thing, and Lewis checks that box.
“I don’t think they’re all that different,” said Jack Fonseca, CLC’s director of political operations, when asked about Lewis and Sloan. “They’re both pro-life and pro-family. And that’s our primary criteria for endorsement. They both hold generally similar values on the sanctity of life and family values.”
At some point CLC will have a voter guide and it could recommend putting one of Sloan or Lewis in first place on the ballot, Fonseca said, or it could co-rank them equally.
But how social conservatives eventually line up behind the two candidates, Lewis or Sloan, could give either one of them significant influence in picking a winner between O’Toole and MacKay, if a showdown between those two front-runners is where the race ends up.
Other social-conservative groups have differed in their recommendations. RightNow, a group focused on getting anti-abortion candidates elected, recommends voters rank Lewis first, Sloan second, and then O’Toole before MacKay.
Parents As First Educators, the organization known for anti-sex-ed protests in Ontario, and which has some organizational overlap with the Sloan campaign, has been less supportive of Lewis. Its past president Tanya Granic Allen slammed Lewis for having once sat on the board of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), a feminist legal advocacy group.
Lewis responded by saying she left LEAF’s board after just three months, concluding “it wasn’t the best fit all around.” But the fact she was on the board at all is another indication that Lewis is not your typical social-conservative candidate — and may appeal to a different type of Conservative than Sloan does.
Steve Outhouse, who took over as Lewis’s campaign manager in March, said Lewis sees herself as a “big tent candidate.” Sloan’s campaign manager Paula Iturri did not respond to a request for comment.
“There are people on both extremes of the party who want to boot out members they don’t agree with,” Outhouse said. “Leslyn truly believes we can’t win the next election without a united team. If she’s elected leader, she will respect so-cons, progressives, libertarians ... All conservatives will have a home in the (party).”
After Conservatives fill out their leadership race ballots this summer, the results may hinge on whether Lewis was able to attract a substantially different group of people than Sloan, or whether they were fishing from the same pond all along.
“I think that’s the million-dollar question,” Trost said. He said Sloan’s “throw the bums out” style may mean he attracts some support from anti-establishment populists who aren’t social conservatives, but also aren’t interested in ranking anyone else. On the other hand, Lewis’s lower-key style may attract voters more open to throwing support to O’Toole or MacKay.
The candidates themselves are naturally expected to stay mum about who they might someday throw their support behind, if it comes to that. But in March, Lewis circulated an attack on MacKay for saying the party should “park” discussions about social-conservative issues. And MacKay’s remark after the fall election that Andrew Scheer allowed social-conservative issues to be a “stinking albatross” was not taken well by many social conservatives.
“As the race has evolved, I think MacKay continuously does things that makes social conservatives unhappy,” Trost said. “And if MacKay’s not careful, he’s going to deliver 100 per cent of the socon vote to O’Toole.”
I DON’T THINK THEY’RE ALL THAT DIFFERENT.