O’Leary wouldn’t be able to win Tory race
The conventional wisdom on Kevin O’Leary’s candidacy for Conservative leader, should it materialize, is that he can’t win. Sure, he’s glib and outrageous, a wealthy TV pitchman in an age when people are looking for an “outsider.” But this is not America, and he is not Donald Trump.
And the contrarian take on all of this is: er, the conventional wisdom is right. I know, I know. Nobody thought Trump could win, either. We’ve become educated of late to expect black swans that confound all expert predictions. But not every swan is black. A number of factors combined to produce Trump’s surprise victory in the Republican primary; of these, virtually none are present in the Conservative race.
Start with those two rather salient differences: this is not America, and he is not Trump. Canada has not gone through anything like the serial traumas that the United States has, from the Sept. 11 attacks to the Iraq war to the housing collapse to the financial crisis. We have no parallel to the illegal immigration problem that so divides and defines American politics.
And while O’Leary shares some similarities with Trump, including a U.S. mailing address, he differs from him in important ways. Some are to his credit: he shows no interest in exploiting fears of immigration or crime, for example. But while that may make him a better man, it limits his potential as a demagogue. Whatever his many failings, Trump has undeniable political talents, above all utter shamelessness. O’Leary shows early signs of deficiencies in that regard.
Of greater importance, however, may be the differences in rules between the two races. Just as he won the general election with almost three million fewer votes than his Democratic opponent, Trump won the Republican primary with the smallest percentage of the vote of any nominee in modern times. He did it in uniquely favourable circumstances for such a uniquely polarizing candidate: against a crowded field, in a race that was dominated by a few large states in winner-take-all primaries.
Contrast that with the Conservative race. Yes, there is the same crowded field. But rather than one person-one vote, every riding in the country is weighted equally, each with the same 100 points toward the total. What is more, these are not awarded winner-take-all, but in proportion to each candidate’s share of the vote. And the voting is by ranked ballot, rather than a simple x.
Add it up, and it won’t be enough to dominate in one region or another: candidates will have to do well across the country. A polarizing candidate can’t count on the other candidates splitting the vote: he’ll need to get second and third choices. And he won’t be able to squeak through with a minority of the vote: he’ll need to win an outright majority.
Of course, it’s theoretically possible that a wave of O’Learymania could carry the candidate to a first-ballot victory. But here’s where some of the other differences kick in. Unlike Trump, O’Leary can’t spend his own millions on his campaign: he has to rely on the same maximum $1,500 individual donations as everyone else. Neither can he go out and buy up thousands of new memberships, en masse, as candidates might have in the past: party rules require new members to pay for their own memberships, with a credit card. And there is less than 10 weeks left for new members to join.
So he is unlikely to win, as Trump did, with the help of masses of uncommitted “walk-in” voters. He’s going to have to appeal to the base of existing Conservative members, in riding associations across the country; and not sequentially, as in a U.S. primary, but all on the same day. Here again he faces daunting obstacles.
He has no history in the party, knows few of its members, has but a handful of endorsements. He is starting late, meaning he has to raise funds and put together an organization from scratch that other candidates have had months to amass. And his inability to speak French likely means he starts by writing off Quebec, with nearly 25 per cent of the ridings.
Maybe his message is powerful enough to make up for this? But what is that message? We’ve already seen that he’s not going to ride an anti-immigrant, populist grudge campaign, and if he were, Kellie Leitch has made that her own. He might seem a more natural fit for a small-government, libertarian message: but Maxime Bernier got there first. And when you listen to what comes out of his mouth, the most striking thing is how little of it is, well, conservative.
He describes himself as “very liberal” on social policy. His favourite news organization is the CBC. He rhapsodizes about Canada’s peacekeeping role like the most sighing Trudeau Liberal. Even on economic policy, he is anything but a consistent free marketer: while not a protectionist in the Trump mould, he espouses the same sort of businessman’s economics, one that emphasizes hard bargaining with recipients of government subsidy rather than getting out of the corporate welfare game and letting markets work.
What we’re left with, then, is a campaign that depends almost entirely on name recognition and shock value: if his track record is anything to go by, O’Leary can be relied upon to say a half a dozen dumb, offensive or crazy things a day (of which his proposal to auction off Senate seats provides a foretaste). Maybe there are some voters this will appeal to, as Trump showed, on sheer “the enemy of the elite is my friend” grounds. But are there enough to win with? I doubt it.
CANDIDATES WILL HAVE TO DO WELL ACROSS THE COUNTRY.