To follow up on my earlier post on Trump-wannabe Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, because I’m keeping track, damn it:
She’s been condemned by fellow leadership candidates Michael Chong and Deepak Obhrai; Obhrai also reports he’s getting angry emails telling him to leave the country thanks to his opposition to Leitch’s immigration policies.
At the Conservatives’ leadership debate last Wednesday, Leitch cited Points of Entry, a book by McMaster sociology professor Victor Satzewich that looks at decision-making by visa officers, as evidence that Canada’s immigration standards are weak. Trouble is, Satzewich disagrees with Leitch, and would rather not have his work used to make her argument. Buzzfeed, iPolitics.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that despite her anti-elite rhetoric, Leitch is holding a $500-a-plate fundraiser in Toronto next Monday. It’s possible that Leitch, a paediatric surgeon and university professor, may need an explanation of what “elite” means. Now you can run a campaign strictly on small donations (many politicians have, and have made a hair-shirt point of it) but it’s unlikely she’d have raised the $450,000 she has as of September 30 if she had. You kind of need the elites for that kind of dosh. In the July-September quarter, for example, she raised $215,635.97 from 811 donors, an average of $265.89 per donor. Not exactly small donations from lots of grassroots supporters.1
Brian Alkerton is joining the Conservative Party just to vote against her, and suggests the rest of us do the same. The trouble with candidates like her is that sometimes they win despite everything, as we’ve seen elsewhere, and we can’t assume that she’ll be defeated later if she wins now. The world is full of black swans lately.
Thinking ahead to the next election. Simcoe–Grey, Leitch’s constituency, is normally considered a safe Conservative seat, but it’s not an impossible one. The Liberals held it in the 1990s, losing it narrowly to Helena Guergis in 2004 by only 100 votes. In 2011 Leitch won the seat; she was re-elected in 2015 with 46.6 percent of the vote vs. the Liberal candidate’s 38.6 percent — a margin of 5,260 votes. Difficult but not impossible, for a decent candidate with a well-funded campaign. Hint, hint.
(Much of the above via Dale Smith.)
Note
- Maxime Bernier and Michael Chong have raised $428K and $209K, respectively, to the end of September. In the July-September quarter, Bernier raised $307,605.89 from 1,838 donors during that quarter — an average of $167.36 per donor. Michael Chong raised $124,224.34 from 243 donors — an average of $511.21 per donor.
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