Brown’s comeback bid fuelled by federal friends
Patrick Brown’s comeback campaign to lead Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party is being run from the Ottawa home of former Conservative member of Parliament Brian Storseth.
The fact that Brown’s campaign is starting in Ottawa speaks to his political bedrock, exposed now that allegations of sexual misdeeds have scoured away many of his contacts and supporters in federal politics.
Like Brown, Storseth is about 40, was first elected in 2006 and spent nine years on the back benches. Like Brown, he has a penchant for hockeybased charity fundraisers. Like Brown, Storseth quit federal politics in 2015 and made a bid to enter provincial politics. Unlike Brown, Storseth lost as he sought a PC nomination at home in Alberta.
Storseth is now chair of Reliq Health, a company that makes telemedicine technology. He cochaired Maxime Bernier’s campaign to lead the federal Tories and he’s a vocal supporter of Brown’s career in provincial politics here.
As it happens, Brian Storseth’s wife, Amel, works as an assistant to Brown’s successor and friend Alex Nuttall, the current Barrie Conservative MP who called a news conference at the end of January to denounce Brown’s downfall as an inside job by Toronto elites. Nuttall is “one of our federal endorsements,” Storseth said.
The first person to speak up directly on Brown’s behalf after he resigned was Alise Mills, a crisiscommunications expert. She’s based in Vancouver but did a short stint in Ottawa as the head of Conservative Voice, a non-profit formed to push for fiscal conservatism.
Brown ran for the provincial Tory leadership as an outsider come to shake things up. After he defeated establishment candidate Christine Elliott, he imported experienced pros from Stephen Harper’s party and government to join his staff as leader of the opposition at Queen’s Park, to run the Progressive Conservative party and to plan the upcoming election campaign. Other former MPs flocked to Brown’s side as provincial candidates.
Brown’s own backroomers kicked the struts out from under him when the allegations of sexual misdeeds first aired, several quitting while Brown gave his news conference denying everything. When they left him, they seemed to take the promise of victory in June with them.
The ex-MPs have mostly moved over to Caroline Mulroney’s camp; that was before Brown’s surprise entry in the leadership race Friday, but there’s been no mass defection back to Brown’s side.
His prominent backers now mostly fall into two groups: federal-politics allies such as Storseth and people he recruited to the provincial party after becoming leader. As he kicked off his campaign in Mississauga on Sunday, he had one veteran MPP with him in Toby Barrett of Haldimand-Norfolk, The others on stage with him were family, rookie MPP Ross Romano of Sault Ste. Marie and a passel of yet-unelected candidates.
Brown’s backers are effectively lined up against interim leader Vic Fedeli and Lanark MPP Randy
Hillier. Fedeli, who until Friday I’d have said was universally respected by Ontario Tories, talks about the party having rotted under Brown’s leadership and kicked him out of the caucus. Hillier, the former maverick populist who’s adapted to life on a team in his 10 years in politics, has been a human flamethrower pointed at Brown for a week now, accusing him of flat-out fraud in his administration of the party.
If Brown should win his way back, it’ll be awfully hard for them to stick around under his renewed leadership. But Brown didn’t need their support when he won last time, and with a seemingly bottomless well of federalpolitics friends to draw on, maybe he won’t need it this time, either.