Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives don’t have
leadership races – they are more like public executions. The Tories
will choose a leader to succeed defeated premier Ernie Eves on
September 18 and are unable to resist stabbing each other in the
back, as they have done before.
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| name="valign" top > ERIC DOWD |
The front-runner, by most estimates, is John
Tory, a senior backroom adviser who started under moderate premier
William Davis in the 1980s.
Tory firmly believes the Tories can win with more
moderate policies.
Jim Flaherty, his closest rival and the leading
voice of the party’s far right, said Tory sounds like Liberal
Premier Dalton McGuinty, which is arguably the nastiest insult he
could find.
Tory retorted he has never been a Liberal, but
Flaherty canvassed for Pierre Trudeau when he was prime minister
and did not merely experiment with the Liberals, but inhaled, which
he would rather forget.
Flaherty and the third candidate, Frank Klees,
who were ministers under former premiers Eves and Mike Harris, have
said Tory has no business running for leader when he has never been
elected to anything and has no experience governing.
Klees said this is no time to choose a candidate
who has not won an election or sat in cabinet. He also doesn’t
believe Tory appreciates the difficult
decisions a leader has to make. He also doesn’t
believe Tory understands Ontario includes more than Tory’s hometown
of Toronto.
Flaherty claimed he knows about winning
elections, because he was “on the ballot and on the front lawn”,
somewhat like John Kerry pointing out he served in Vietnam.
Klees charged Tory was not seen in their party
during the tough decade when it was rebuilding to win the 1995
election, making Tory seem like George W. Bush resting comfortably
at home in the National Guard. Tory retorted Klees was silly and he
was on the party executive before Klees joined it.
Tory maintained he was on Harris’ campaign team
in 1990 and did a lot of jobs for the party in 1995, but Klees
responded “none of us saw you”.
When Tory suggested some Harris policies were
implemented with too much confrontation and not enough
consultation, Flaherty reminded “you weren’t there and we were
there.”
Klees said Ontario is different than when Tory
was in Davis’s office. He then took another jab at his past saying
the Conservatives have to take
control of their party from advisers who were not
elected, but were involved in making key decisions.
Someone also anonymously made public allegations
Flaherty still owes his hard-up party $50,000 from his 2002 run for
leader and his campaign
called this dirty politics.
This squabbling between Conservatives will
provide ammunition for opponents, particularly if Tory wins because
they will be able to say even top members of his own party feel he
lacks experience to govern and has no history of being in charge
when the going gets rough.
It is another example of how Conservatives, more
than other parties, run each other down in leadership
contests.
After Eves won, it was held against him that
leadership rivals called him wishy-washy and a pale, pink imitation
of a Liberal who lacked ideas on how to govern.
Harris became leader partly because his
supporters said the moderates who ran the party before them had no
firm principles and made policy through four guys sifting through
polls in a Toronto hotel room.
Other parties manage to get through leadership
races without showing such animosity toward each other. However,
one reason the Conservatives have such zest is they have been in
government, where they have few opportunities to express
differences of opinion, for 50 of the last 61 years, and these
leadership races offer a rare opportunity to let off steam.
Leadership of the Conservative party also is an
awesome prize, because almost all its leaders in the past 50 years
have gone on to become premier, and candidates may feel encouraged
to leave no stone unturned to win.
Many candidates in recent Conservative leadership
races also have been right-wing zealots who are totally convinced
only they are right and they are not willing to be moderate, even
in language.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s
Park press gallery.
