O’Leary quits Tory leadership race
Believes he was lacking support in home province of Quebec; backs Bernier
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 by quitting a contest observers believe he had every chance of winning.
O’Leary’s stunning Wednesday announcement — he threw 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 that evening’s final leadership debate.
He met with about 60 people in a downtown Hamilton hotel Wednesday morning, but gave no inkling of the decision to come.
Behind the scenes, however, he’d been 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.
“This is obviously very dis-
appointing for me. As someone who was born in Montreal, I had hoped I would do much better there,” O’Leary said in a statement, just hours after informing his campaign team of his decision.
He’s supporting Bernier because the longtime Quebec MP’s policies mirror his own, he added.
“He is perhaps the first Conservative in a long time that has a chance of winning over 40 seats there, which would materially improve our chances for a majority mandate,” O’Leary said.
“So here is what I’m going to do; I’m withdrawing my candidacy from the leadership race and throwing my full support behind Max.”
Bernier’s campaign did not immediately comment.
A lack of facility with French was always considered one of O’Leary’s greatest liabilities. He skipped the last bilingual debate in Edmonton over concerns about the format, and had waited to enter the race until after the French-language one in January.
In the early days of the race, he played down the importance of being able to speak French, but changed his tune and hired a tutor to help him brush up after a public outcry.
It was one of several about-faces he’s made during the three months he was officially in the contest. Still, O’Leary had plenty of assets: instant recognition, thanks to years of television exposure; a public image as a savvy financial manager; and a brash, no-nonsense, outsider approach that echoed the unlikely ascent of U.S. President Donald Trump.
He had promised to talk up the Canadian economy and trade in a way he complained the current Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had failed to do.
“If Trudeau isn’t beaten in the next election, he will leave the next generation of Canadians, those thousands of millennials I’ve been talking about, with a mountain of debt and high taxes. This cannot be allowed to happen,” O’Leary said Wednesday.
It’s unclear how the late-campaign withdrawal will impact logistics. Ballots bearing O’Leary’s name have already arrived in the mailboxes of party members, amplifying the risk that Bernier won’t reap all the benefits of his departure. While Bernier and O’Leary have been running neck-and-neck, O’Leary said the ranked ballot system being used in the race made his own victory unlikely.
“Because I am an outsider I have very weak second ballot support,” he said.
The Conservative party said Tuesday there are 259,010 members eligible to vote. O’Leary claims to have signed up just over 35,000, and there’s no guarantee any or all will agree to back Bernier.