Staffer known as doggedly loyal, tough-minded
Before testifying, Byrne largely out of the limelight
A Harper loyalist who can trace her Reform Party credentials back to her Ontario adolescence, Jenni Byrne is highly regarded among Conservatives for her ability to get things done.
She has been described as a workaholic not afraid to cross swords with others both in government and the Conservative party. She’s also notoriously tough-minded and reticent to speak to media, which has earned the deputy chief of staff to Mr. Harper a low profile.
On Monday, though, Ms. Byrne was on the witness stand at the high-profile Luka Magnotta murder trial in Montreal — she was the Conservatives’ director of political operations when a package containing a body part arrived at the party headquarters in Ottawa — even as it emerged she has been selected to run the Conservative party’s campaign during next year’s federal election.
She had run the party’s successful 2011 bid for a majority government. She is widely respected among Conservatives for her unflagging loyalty, even as the party struggled to win power throughout the ’90s and early 2000s.
‘‘She mobilized a national volunteer army when we were in opposition and didn’t have a lot of carrots to offer,’’ Ian Brodie, Mr. Harper’s former chief of staff, said. ‘‘That’s a real skill, and belies all the arguments about being dictatorial and so forth. She was a great organizer when we had very little money and very little prospect of actually winning. She’s one of the last people around from that era of the Harper organization. Nobody handed her anything on a platter. She earned it all.”
Born in Lindsay, Ont., she has been a political organizer ‘‘for basically her whole life,” Mr. Brodie said.
She joined the Reform Party at the age of 16, citing its economic policies. She went on to become president of the Reform Party club at the Univer- sity of Ottawa in the late ’90s. Since then she’s been promoted through the political hierarchy to one of the top operational jobs in government well before the age of 40.
“There’s certainly a toughness that is required,” said Tom Flanagan, a former campaign manager for Mr. Harper. “She’s now worked with all these constituency associations, and they really do need some strong direction to make sure they’re following the rules, doing what the party expects of them. You can’t be a shrinking violet in that job. You have to be willing to lay down the law.”
Mr. Flanagan noted Ms. Byrne worked under the late sen-
She was a great organizer when we had very little money
ator Doug Finley when he was the party’s campaign manager, until he stepped back due to medical issues.
Ms. Byrne — who once dated Pierre Poilievre, who is now a cabinet minister — was at Mr. Finley’s side when the party mastered voter identification and database techniques that anchored their electoral wins.
“She’s schooled in everything Doug did. She may be young in years, but she’s very experienced for the job that she has. I can’t think of anybody more experienced than she would be,” Mr. Flanagan said.
Ms. Byrne, interviewed as the 21-year-old president of U of O’s Reform club, said she believed in debt-reduction and tax cuts and emphasized how it was more important to her generation than to her parents.
“It’s great for them to say don’t cut here or there, but they won’t be the ones affected by [the debt],” she said at the time.
“They’re in their late 40s and they will probably still benefit from government programs. But Canada looks like a bleak place for me by the time I’m their age.”
Nearly two decades later, Ms. Byrne is working with Mr. Harper and other senior Tories to make tax cuts a key issue in the next election.