Race for presidency of Ontario PCs heats up
It’s shaping up to be a party heavyweight bout
The race for the presidency of the Progressive Conservatives is shaping up as a clash of party titans.
With Tory delegates electing a new president in November to succeed the departing Jag Badwal, two PC heavyweights have thrown their hats in the ring.
Grassroots activist Jim Karahalios, briefly kicked out of the party last fall when Patrick Brown was still leader, is “focused on bringing integrity and accountability into the governance of our Ontario PC Party.”
“The lesson learned from the prior leadership of our party is that we need a higher standard of integrity,” Karahalios, leader of the Axe the Carbon Tax movement, said in an email to Tories.
Brian Patterson, a respected party stalwart who has worked with every leader dating to Bill Davis in the early 1980s, is seen as the front-runner in the twoman race that officially kicks off when nominations close at 5 p.m. Friday.
Sources said that while Premier Doug Ford will likely be publicly neutral in the contest, he has privately indicated his preference is Patterson.
A Ford confidant, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, said Ford wants a professionally run party that focuses on fundraising and membership outreach while leaving policy and politics to elected Tory MPPs.
Patterson, a low-key veteran political staffer who was not available for comment Thursday, prefers to remain out of the limelight.
But he was a key official in the governments of former premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves before helping rebuild the party after its 2003 defeat, working closely with former leaders John Tory and Tim Hudak. When Brown took the helm in 2015, Patterson left Queen’s Park, remaining a volunteer organizer in his local riding of King-Vaughan, where he managed the campaign of rising PC star Stephen Lecce.
Karahalios, who is married to PC MPP Belinda Karahalios (Cambridge), was taken to court by the Tories when Brown was leader last year.
But Superior Court Justice Paul Perell threw out the case the party filed against him, ruling it was a SLAPP, a “strategic lawsuit against public participation” to stifle dissent.
Following Brown’s January resignation as leader, the Tories publicly apologized to Karahalios in March for the way he was treated.
Then-interim leader Vic Fedeli, now the finance minister, pledged at the time to clean up the “rot” that had infested the Tories with questionable candidate nomination elections and other irregularities.
In his email to PC members, Karahalios said those “fabricated allegations against me that were dismissed in court” are an example of why the party needs internal reform.