O’Leary quits Tory race

OTTAWA — Celebrity investor and reality-TV star Kevin O’Leary, who rattled Conservative cages three months ago when he joined the party’s leadership race, did it again Wednesday by quitting a contest observers believe he had every chance of winning.

O’Leary’s stunning news – he’s throwing his support behind Quebec rival Maxime Bernier – appeared to catch even some members of his campaign team off-guard as they gathered to prepare for Wednesday’s final leadership debate.

Behind the scenes, however, O’Leary was mulling the idea for about a week, say sources, ever more convinced that as leader, he might never be able to rally enough support in Quebec to deliver a majority Conservative mandate in 2019.

“It’s selfish to just take the leadership and say, ‘Great, I’m the leader, now in 24 months I will lose for the party,”’ the frank-talking Shark Tank star told a news conference in Toronto. “That’s not right. That’s just wrong.”

The tipping point, he said, came when he saw Conservative membership numbers overall that were even higher than he expected, which meant he didn’t have as large a share of the support as he thought he did.

When he learned that ballots had already been printed and mailed, he decided to act, picking up a phone at 1:30 a.m. to call Bernier, a longtime Quebec MP, to pledge his support.

The two share similar policies, while Bernier can deliver the number of seats the Tories need to form a majority government, O’Leary said.

On the campaign trail, the two weren’t exactly the best of friends. Bernier at one point called O’Leary a “loser,” and each campaign more or less accused the other of voter fraud, though the allegations were never proven. But it was all smiles from Bernier on Wednesday.

“As Kevin says, in Quebec the numbers for me are very good and the competition I had outside Quebec was really Kevin,” Bernier said in French.