Erin O’Toole: Slick, Fast, a Lamborghini… Until, he drove it into a tree.
A review of his campaign running for the conservative party leadership.
OPINION
Written for PM4PM by Peter Walsworth
In the 2017 conservative party leadership race, Erin O’Toole (EOT) quietly assumed the role of the “moderate” voice between a controversial, but charismatic libertarian Maxime Bernier and a well liked but largely unknown former speaker of the house of commons, and social conservative, Andrew Scheer.
O’Toole came in third in that race. He may have lost the leadership, but his performance cemented in the minds of many conservatives that he was someone to watch, a man they could trust because he was consistent, level and honest. His pitch at that time, he’d be the one who could draw the moderate center back under the big tent.
Andrew Scheer would go onto win the leadership, where as Erin O’Toole had earned a trusted role in Scheer’s shadow government as the official opposition critic for foreign affairs, a platform which further elevated his presence within conservative ranks.
The political landscape in Canada changed dramatically in a relatively short period of time, as the first term of Trudeau’s liberals came to a close. Trudeau’s policies and ambivalence towards our energy sector created angry divides within the western provinces, fueling talks of WEXIT separation.
A term embroiled in multiple ethics scandals and personal controversies, the liberals found their moderate support eroding, and forced them to react by going onto the offensive, attacking Scheer where he couldn’t hide, his personal ideologies about “choice laws” and equality of freedoms. The left favoring MSM pounced on this “distraction” and when Andrew Scheer stumbled over basic questions about his opinion, the narrative of the election shifted away from Trudeau’s poor record and shameful conduct and suddenly became a referendum of societal conscience — “Did Canadians trust Andrew Scheer enough to believe that he wouldn’t try and change the laws related to abortion and gay rights?” The answer was a clear no, and Trudeau narrowly won the election, but still he survived.
The election loss, planted the seeds for how Erin O’Toole would make his next move.
In January 2020, following the resignation of Andrew Scheer as leader of the conservative party, Erin O’Toole formally submitted his intent to run for the leadership. But this time, Erin took a completely different approach. He knew one of his main rivals in this race would eventually become Peter MacKay — who is well established as a strong moderate voice.
Seizing upon the growing resentment developing in the western provinces towards the current progressive government and their anger aimed at the eastern provinces who handed the liberals a victory — O’Toole rebranded himself as the “true blue conservative” and began heavily engaging with the social conservative/ western reform voter base within those provinces.
It didn’t matter that the candidate’s HoC voting record clearly demonstrated that he was in fact “a moderate voice”. O’Toole knew, if he also ran on the progressive ticket — he’d surely lose to the man who was once the leader of the progressive conservative party.
And he’s not a fool. Prior to his campaign for leadership, EOT was extremely careful not to pigeon hole himself into declaring whether he was either prochoice or prolife — always dodging the specifics of that question. The smoke screen seemingly worked as reviews on the “Campaign Life Coalition” [the largest prolife lobby in Canada] couldn’t identify what O’Toole’s firm position was on core social values and “yellow lighted” him as “position unknown” on their initial candidate review.
Soundbites linger on, but voting records require effort to recover, and what low information voter is going to check?
He started off with a bang! O’Toole put together a Lamborghini style campaign and team. Slick, fast and professional. Knowing that elections in the digital era are now fought and won on social media EOT hired Jeff Ballingall, founder of Ontario Proud, Canada Proud and the CMO of Post Millennial [all popular conservative focused social media platforms] to oversee his digital strategy.
The plan was simple. Draw upon the anger within the western provinces and using those core issues to convince conservatives across Canada that our country has shifted too far to the left and we needed to rebrand party (pushing further right) in order to take the country back.
Its a pitch we’ve seen before, stolen directly from the Donald Trump playbook. Anger the populous movement into action and run on the emotion of people who have been hurt by previous progressive ideologies. Easy to find unrest in a divided country where the prime minister has raised tensions to a level we’ve rarely seen in the past.
Right out of the gate, Erin O’Toole began attacking Peter MacKay for being too liberal. The social media site Canada Proud who’s subscriber base exceeds 210,000 conservative friendly viewers launched a slick attack campaign against the “liberal lite” Peter MacKay.
“Liberal Lites” vs “True Blue Conservatives”
Erin O’Toole’s campaign was relentless in their constant attacks against progressive conservatives, associating moderates within his own party as not being conservative enough for his idea of a “big tent”. The divisive tactics O’Toole engaged in were so distasteful he would receive complaints from the CPC that they were NOT impressed with how much damage he was causing to his own party.
Division is what Justin Trudeau used to build his base and we can all see how divided the rest of Canada is now. No one expected the once “moderate” Erin O’Toole to use a strategy of alienation in order to win votes among the rank and file. Progressive were left scratching their heads and asking “who does that to their own family?” BUT the confused messaging didn’t stop only with the progressives.
Who does that in their own family?
Within O’Tooles own support, as repeated attack ads and videos surfaced online, the comment sections were ablaze with his own base criticizing EOT for his poor conduct and mudslinging.
What started out as organized and slick, devolved into the worst kind of chaos politics. The approach was so absolute that a bitter resentment between the left and the right within our own party has seen definitive lines drawn in the sand which would call for an exodus of CPC party members should their candidate of choice not win this election.
Erin O’Toole has done what Justin Trudeau couldn’t. He divided the conservative party.
Though its difficult to find any negative comments or attacks aimed at him by his opponents, Erin O’Toole regularly blamed Peter MacKay for the tone of this election. On a daily basis, social media was blasted with negative headlines and content from Post Millennial, Canada Proud and the O’Toole official campaign facebook page.
Slick, turned into a messy goo!
Miss steps are common in a long election and with Covid-19 affecting how this all played out there were plenty of tactical errors that helped define the O’Toole campaign.
Jim Karahalios a contentious candidate prospect in the leadership race was removed from contention after a bigot laden letter he wrote surfaced about O’Toole’s campaign chair Walied Soliman, a Toronto lawyer and Muslim.
Under pressure from O’Toole, the CPC buckled and removed Karahalios from contention, which enraged the alt right within the party who attacked O’Toole for manipulating the election. Karahalios would end up taking this issue to court and winning his case of being wrongfully removed. Though days later, the CPC again ruled that under “their authority” he was not accepted to run in this election, further agitating an already upset further right.
In March as the pandemic was starting to shut down daily routines, Erin O’Toole’s polling numbers were slumping. The momentum at the time was definitely Peter MacKay’s. Seizing the opportunity EOT lobbied the CPC to suspend the election, which they did and where all of the campaigns were asked to also suspend their activities (until an official restart).
But instead of complying the O’Toole camp continued to campaign and raise funds — taking advantage of the pandemic break to build back some lost ground. The CPC was (out of fairness) forced to step in and tell O’Toole to stop, but sure enough when that quarter showed the O’Toole camp out paced the other candidates in fundraising — a huge poster flooded social media in an attempt to signal (falsely) that Erin O’Toole was once again back on top.
When June rolled around all of the campaigns were back running at full speed. The pandemic made it impossible for face to face group meetings so the candidates all turned to virtual video conferencing to get their messages out. News broke from the O’Toole camp that they had called in the police to investigate the MacKay campaign for theft of their virtual property. An embarrassing free attack for the onlooking liberals when it was discovered that one of O’Toole’s own MP endorsements (Calgary MP Greg McLean) had a summer intern who sent the access codes to the videos to all sitting MPs in the HoC.
O’Toole, splashing the initial allegations on the Post Millennial, no retraction or apologies were made in return.
This total posted on Aug 19 (two days before ballot deadline). Compare to the Andrew Scheer Leadership election where in total 141,0000 votes were cast.
Though it should be considered idle gossip, after seeing how the O’Toole campaign has conducted themselves — stories are circulating about the O’Toole camp preparing legal documents to contest a Peter MacKay win on Aug 23rd. The apparent charge is voter suppression where apparently (even with the forced suspension of their campaigns) the CPC didn’t allow enough time for members to vote?
They swerved, but didn’t miss the tree. The Turning point…
The French only debate was the turning point in the O’Toole campaign. Unable to match his opponent in topic, charisma or frankly command of the language — Mr. O’Toole often found himself frustrated and angry. Trending on social media #angryerin emerged as the candidate struggled to make any impact other than showing he has a temper.
But it was after the debate where the real damage was done. Grilled repeatedly by MacKay’s, “are you prochoice or prolife?” O’Toole refused to answer. This signaled to the media that something was amiss and they didn’t let him off the hook. The tactical error O’Toole made then, may have cost him the election.
Erin O’Toole was forced to admit that he was ProChoice and if put to a vote on issues of “choice laws” he would always respond in a moderate manner and choose, choice!
This sent social conservative lobbies scrambling to find and endorse a candidate who would represent their core values related to abortion and gay rights. Overnight, Leslyn Lewis (who spoke no more than five paragraphs of prepared text that night) became the candidate of choice for the SoCon vote. The alt right and very controversial candidate, Derek Sloan also enjoyed a significant bump from O’Toole’s public admission.
These past few weeks have been a hard road for Erin O’Toole. His grass root support is desperately trying to keep the patchwork quilt in tact until election day, but there has been a lot of dissension from EOT’s camp, merely because people learned more about the man’s temperament than they did his ability to lead… and it didn’t leave a good impression!
Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author only and are not intended to represent the views or opinions of Peter MacKay, or the Peter MacKay campaign.
Erin O’Toole review: https://medium.com/@pm4pm2020/erin-otoole-slick-fast-a-lamborghini-until-he-drove-it-into-a-tree-c754054a1c72?sk=db61c220c0be3d377c3d4a0747cc4a95
Derek Sloan review: https://medium.com/@pm4pm2020/derek-sloan-we-took-the-time-to-listen-4bdb01b92a7c
Leslyn Lewis review: https://medium.com/@pm4pm2020/leslyn-lewis-the-quiet-rise-of-an-upcoming-star-within-the-cpc-844584420e0c