Is he out of his mind? A spectacular publicity stunt but don’t count him out
Patrick Brown, we hardly knew ye. Now we know you only too well. Even if you don’t seem to know your own mind. Or when to call it quits without attempting a quick comeback.
The man most Ontarians had never heard of is now the most notorious politician in the province, a teetotaller accused of sexual misconduct among drunken teenagers. In the aftermath, he resigned as Progressive Conservative party leader — and renounced his claim to the premiership.
Today, Brown is back. With a vengeance.
The disgraced, discredited, disbelieved politician is vowing to clear his name while tarnishing the name of the party to whom he once promised power: Watch him settle scores against detractors, file lawsuits against alleged defamers, defy party elders, ignore elected MPPs, lash out at his accusers.
Friday morning it was announced that Brown had been ejected from caucus. Friday afternoon it was proclaimed that Brown wanted to be elected as leader — again.
He who has fallen shall seek redemption by re-election.
Is he out of his mind? Don’t count him out.
The membership is mostly his, despite assertions by interim leader Vic Fedeli that the lists are highly inflated. And the policy platform that his rivals have disowned still has his picture on the cover.
We don’t yet know whether he’ll pass the party’s vetting process, but the bar has been set awfully low for the existing leadership candidates: Doug Ford, described by the Globe and Mail as a drug dealer in his youth (he denied it and publicly mused about a lawsuit, but the paper tells me none was ever filed); Caroline Mulroney is a dual citizen (interestingly, the U.S. oath of allegiance requires newcomers to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign . . . state, or sovereignty”); Christine Elliott quit her seat in a huff and walked away from the party (after losing the past two leadership races).
Win or lose, allowed or disallowed, Brown has pulled off a spectacular publicity stunt — reclaiming the media spotlight, reasserting his innocence, rebranding himself as victim not victimizer. But his damage control campaign has done untold damage to the Progressive Conservative brand.
Never mind Brown’s pledge to caucus on the night of his resignation that his priority must be party unity, so that his fellow PCs might defeat their common enemy, Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne.
Who can forget how he regressed before our eyes that night, enfeebled as he faced the media, blubbering about how his sisters were his best friends (apparently precluding the possibility of sexual misconduct), and then fleeing down three flights of stairs at the legislature with the press in pursuit.
On Friday, Brown again tried to escape down four flights of stairs after registering for the leadership contest at party headquarters before the 5 p.m. deadline, chased by yet another press pack (and with his sisters in tow).
Amid the disruption, an already ruptured party has been shaken to its core, its base, its grassroots. While leaderless, the PCs lead all public opinion polls, but now find themselves rudderless — and rotten, according to Fedeli and the party’s executive team, which took over after purging Brown’s cronies and appointees.
Barely 100 days remain before election day, when voters will be asked to repose their trust in a repurposed Progressive Conservative party. A mere 21 days are left until PC members decide who will lead them into the spring campaign.
Time is surely running out. Yet with Friday’s registration deadline looming, Brown went back on his bond, reversing his pledge to quit.
Credibility and authenticity have never been his strong suit. This week, Brown took a lie-detector test to validate his coarse counterattack against those female accusers, but we don’t need a polygraph to know whether a politician is a good or bad liar.
His public record — flipping and flopping on questions of abortion rights, sex education updates and carbon pricing — speaks for itself. While Brown says he will sue CTV for last month’s story alleging sexual misconduct, he is simultaneously (if inconveniently) being sued in a defamation action by the premier for falsely claiming she was on trial in a Sudbury byelection case — no polygraph required, the facts prove him dead wrong.
To some, Brown may appear to be out of his mind as he attempts a do-over of his leadership.
But it all makes sense if you un- derstand that politics is his life, the only life he has ever known — running for Barrie city council while still in university, then becoming a Conservative backbencher in Ottawa in his 20s, and capturing the provincial leadership in his 30s.
As a teenage Young Tory, Brown was photographed sitting in his bedroom looking up at posters of his political idols, never fathoming he’d ultimately be undone by his alleged pursuit of teenage girls as a much older politician. All these years later, at 39, he is desperately determined to reclaim the leadership he lost in order to recover — and relive — his life’s dream. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn