MacKay campaign boasts big membership sales
But it’s who you sign up in Conservative contest, not how many: strategists
Peter MacKay’s campaign claims to have signed up the most new members eligible to vote in the Conservatives’ upcoming leadership contest in the party’s history.
But strategists and party insiders say it’s not how many members a campaign signs up, it’s where those members live in the Conservatives’ riding-weighted leadership contest.
If MacKay’s boast is accurate — his campaign refused to release hard numbers Saturday — that would mean his campaign has signed up more than 35,000 card-carrying Conservatives eligible to cast ballots in the August 21 vote.
That’s the estimate of memberships that Kevin O’Leary’s camp claimed to have sold in the 2017 leadership, when the television personality was the perceived frontrunner until he dropped out of the race.
The Erin O’Toole campaign, seen as MacKay’s closest competition for the party’s top job, also refused to release numbers and did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Steve Outhouse, the campaign manager for Leslyn Lewis, said they would not release numbers, and the Derek Sloan campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Even if the campaigns released their totals, the numbers are impossible to independently verify. The Conservative Party itself will take weeks to review last-minute membership sales before confirming the number of eligible voters in the leadership contest.
One veteran Conservative campaigner told the Star that leadership camps have good reason to lie about overall membership sales to give the impression of momentum — either sustained momentum, in MacKay’s case, or an insurgent challenge by O’Toole’s backers.
“The motivation for all the campaigns to lie about the numbers is unbelievably huge,” the party veteran, who agreed to speak about campaign dynamics on the condition they not be named, told the Star in an interview Saturday.
“It’s an arms race. So my general rule is, whatever numbers people put out, you should probably divide by somewhere between half and two-thirds.”
Heading into 2020, the Conservative membership l roughly 180,000. In the party’s 2017 leadership race, around 141,000 out of 259,000 eligible members cast a ballot.
The 2017 race is a good illustration why candidates’ claims for membership sales don’t necessarily translate into success. Kellie Leitch claimed to have signed up 30,000 members. A well-placed source told the Star that Andrew Scheer signed up between 8,000 and 10,000.
And under the Conservative leadership system, not all votes are equal. Each of the country’s 338 ridings count for 100 points, whether that riding has 2,000 members in downtown Calgary or 20 in downtown Montreal. Winning over ridings in the Atlantic, Quebec and in downtown Toronto can be more valuable than victories in the Conservative heartland of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
O’Toole has veteran Quebec organizers working on his campaign — notably Sen. Leo Housakos and former MP Alupa Clarke. MacKay, meanwhile, is thought to have the inside track in the Atlantic. MacKay, a native Nova Scotian, was the regional minister for Atlantic Canada under the Harper governments and has deep ties in the region.