O’LEARY’S OUT: Reality TV star quits federal Conservative leadership race and throws his support behind Bernier
Gave no inkling of move during visit to Hamilton Wednesday morning; 60 attended
OTTAWA — 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 announcement on Wednesday — he’s throwing 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 attracted about 60 people to a breakfast meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in Hamilton Wednesday morning. He did not give any inkling he was going to drop out. He posed for photos, answered questions and talked about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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 disappointing 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 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. “This is terrible!” Facebook visitor Nathan Welbourn wrote on O’Leary’s page after the news was posted. “I don’t even know what to say and I can reassure you Kevin my vote is not going to Bernier.
“As a citizen of Quebec I had a lot of hope (in) you. Extremely disappointed.”
A major point of divergence between the two candidates is supply management, a Canadian mechanism for supporting dairy farmers popular in Quebec that has been making headlines as Trump promises to do battle with Canada over trade.
Bernier supports abolishing the system, while O’Leary has called it vital to Canada’s agriculture sector.
The other Quebec candidate in the race, Steven Blaney, said since he also supports supply management, O’Leary’s departure opens a door.
“It’s an opportunity to go and court the voters who were ready to make their first choice Mr. O’Leary,” Blaney said.