Dion the Dark Horse

From the Anyone But Iggy and Maybe Anyone But Rae Déjà Vu department:

An Ekos poll shows Stéphane Dion as a solid second and third choice among Liberal delegates to that party’s upcoming leadership convention.

Liberal convention delegates should very closely look at their candidates, especially those promoted by the establishment of their party, with a very critical eye. Choose what’s best for Canada, not what’s best for the party. The former will take care of the latter, if only you can make your choices with clarity and courage.

The Liberal leadership race leaves a strong sense of déjà vu in the minds of former Progressive Conservatives. We certainly know a thing or two about dark horse candidates fighting the party establishment.

In our final leadership election you had the establishment’s pick, the hapless, petulant, and career limited, Peter MacKay, a man who is a textbook example of the peter principle, in the lead throughout the run up to the convention. The establishment’s choice normally does lead, with more support, more money, and more back room arm twisting that is anything but democratic.

That party also had its divisions. There was the Joe Clark vs the Brian Mulroney wings of the party. There was the merge with the Canadian Alliance vs the go it alone and rebuild (my wing) of the party.

There was a bit of a star outsider too, at least from a cultural perspective. Canadian sovereigntist and anti-NAFTA activist David Orchard was at least no pro-war no ex-pat returned home Ignatieff, and he brought with him his own help and support.

The race featured two underdogs who were collegial in their interactions, like Dion and Gerard Kennedy. Scott Brison, then a Tory (when the party could rightly be called Tory) enjoyed broad support among many of the youth within the party. His socially liberal but very Bay Street fiscal leanings attracted more than just the youth. And there was Jim Prentice, a long time party man and former treasurer of the party during the dark days following the end of the Mulroney era. A solid, thoughtful candidate who was unafraid to support controversial issues like same sex marriage, or the red-hot topic of eventual reunification of the “conservative” family in Canada. Prentice was merely an honest man who couldn’t say “never” when asked about the latter.

Every race has its also rans, and this race featured Craig Chandler, a member of the Canadian Alliance who ran on a “two cards” campaign – a suggestion that members of the CA take out a membership in the PCPC to help effect a take over. He of course only wanted to make a statement or two from his soapbox during the race.

During the race the key wedge issue became “merger”. Peter MacKay’s team early on in the race had him declare “I am not the merger candidate”, hoping to isolate Prentice some, and perhaps leave a door open to grab some of Orchard’s band of nationalists, all of whom strongly opposed any rapprochement with Stephen Harper and the Canadian Alliance.

Prentice soldiered on, quietly gaining the trust and respect of many within the party. I supported Prentice openly, despite my own reservations about any potential merger, because I, like other party activists who valued democratic principle more than the establishment of the party, trusted Prentice. By the time we all flew to the convention in Toronto, Prentice had become the race’s “dark horse” candidate.

During the convention Brison and Prentice both delivered strong performances on stage. MacKay’s people called Prentice’s passionate speech, which was rife with heartfelt passion for a sovereign Canada, “over the top”. By all accounts, MacKay’s effort was one of the worst leadership candidate performances ever witnessed.

But performance doesn’t matter when the elite of a party as old as Canada itself have their minds set on something. Liberals not supporting Ignatieff would do well to remember this.

Chandler of course dropped out of the running. Much to the Prentice team’s horror, he endorsed Prentice, largely because Prentice had a history of being open some sort of eventual conservative reunification within Canada. Had Chandler realized that Prentice would go on to be only one of 4 Conservative Party MP’s to vote in favour of the Martin government’s same sex marriage bill, its unlikely he would have graced Prentice with his support. Years later Chandler would go on to be featured in a compelling CBC documentary, God Only Knows:Same Sex Marriage, where he and a gay pastor from Vancouver spend time together in each other’s cities and homes.

The other leadership camps used the Chandler endorsement to what effect they could. On the convention floor I heard from Brison, MacKay and Orchard delegates that the Chandler nod gave them heartburn, causing them to drop Prentice from their second choice list. Many of us orange-shirted Prentice supporters went to work on those perceptions. We simply told the truth – our campaign supported same sex marriage rights; MacKay’s did not.

With four contenders left in the running, Brison came up last by a narrow margin and was forced off the ballot. Despite tremendous pressure from MacKay’s team – the establishment, Mulroney, team, Brison cast his support to Prentice. Prentice and Brison supporters spontaneously started swapping shirts and banded together to defeat the establishment campaign and its figurehead, Peter MacKay.

Momentum had turned, and in a big way, and the dark horse candidate, Jim Prentice, was suddenly poised to win the leadership.

The Prentice team had always tried to extend a welcome hand to the Orchard folks.

We’d always known that MacKay had no way to substantially grow his vote, and in the parallel Liberal universe, Michael Ignatieff faces the same problem. Déjà vu.

And if MacKay was stalled, Orchard had hit a road-block long before. His populist pro-Canada, anti-NAFTA message couldn’t attract additional delegates on the floor so he would lose his second-place standing in the next vote and come up last, and drop off the ballot.

MacKay’s team, led by campaign manager John Laschinger who is something of a Karl Rovian figure in Canadian politics, had to do something dramatic. They tried to woo Brison supporters. Most did not bite. They tried to bring over Orchard supporters, citing Prentice as the scary merger candidate, and some probably did consider moving.

The mood on the floor was electric… this battle was exciting and there was a strong sense of change in the air. But behind the curtains a dark scene was being readied for this play.

Suddenly the mood changed all at once. Bruck Easton, then president of the party, said to me on the floor “Its too bad about Prentice”; I’d not yet seen what was happening behind me.

Joe Clark – who I know favoured Brison but did not support Prentice at all – was up in Orchard’s bleechers shaking his hand. A deal between MacKay and Orchard had been done.

The greatest charade of the history of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, a party that has its roots in the very formation of Canada in 1867, had just been pulled. MacKay’s team had managed to convince Orchard that only MacKay could protect the PC Party from becoming an eventual merger or acquisition target of Harper’s Canadian Alliance.

In a contract penned on a napkin between Orchard and MacKay, Mulroney’s man MacKay made a few simple promises and most important among them was a pledge that he would never entertain merger discussions with Stephen Harper and the Canadian Alliance. MacKay never had any intention of honouring that pledge.

That proposition was the biggest lie told on that floor of the convention, and anyone involved in the Prentice campaign knew it. Frankly if I actually believed that MacKay – whose backroom boys and girls were a virtual who’s who of Mulroneyites and merger supporters – would life up to the deal, I would be semi-satisfied with the convention outcome.

Orchard had let his fear of the CA, and his ego, get in the way of seeing the truth. He was sold a bill of goods which he bought and then resold to his flock. We desperately tried to convince Orchard’s delegates that they should not buy the unfolding plot. Some listened I know, but most followed their leader and cast their vote for MacKay.

If the mood on the floor was electric before it was positively thunderous then. Without any real organization, suddenly all of the Prentice and Brison supporters were on the floor, facing off with MacKay’s supporters who were equally aggressive at first. We chanted “Principle, Prin-ci-pul, PRIN-CI-PUL!” over and over again for what seemed like many minutes. MacKay’s supporters, visibly cowed, shrunk back. Even some of them knew that something untoward had happened.

Many of Orchard’s supporters were in tears. Our team had no time for crying, yet.

Convention organizers and party officials wandered around with worried faces. We were openly challenging MacKay’s lies and deception, right there live on national TV.

I don’t recall how we pulled the situation back from turning into a brawl, but eventually we had to. The final step had to be taken, the last vote. Orchard pulled his throng into a room and exhorted them to vote for MacKay. He placed some of his lieutenants along the voting line up to remind people “you know what to do”. And they voted, many of them crying as they did so, overwhelmingly for MacKay.

Mulroney and the party establishment had won the day, and installed a puppet leader whose only job was to see how quickly the party could be dismantled.

Within weeks Peter MacKay was meeting secretly with Stephen Harper. Subject: merger of the parties.

The establishment rammed the merger through. Many former Tories, especially those who more or less disappeared following the Mulroney defeat, filled with the lust to regain power, signed on to the deal. They’d wanted it all along.

Some saw it as pragmatic; some saw it as unstoppable and hoped to exert positive influence through participation; some saw the merger as a serious threat to Canada and left the party altogether.

Or, more accurately, the party left them.