OTTAWA -- “Erin Who?” steals an oldie headline from the Joe Clark era, but it’s a goodie, now that Conservatives have voted in a leader whose name triggers a furrowed brow for average Canadian reaction.
Within the Conservative party he now leads, MP Erin O’Toole is well-known and liked.
But in the real world he needs to conquer next, with mere months before a possible general election, he’s a blank canvas.
That presents a problem -- and an opportunity.
The Conservative candidate who embraced a harder-right, truer-blue, left-is-radical campaign narrative has a difficult choice to make.
Was he acting out the role to win the race and will now reset to moderate-middle leadership?
Or will that narrower vision of conservativism and his political indebtedness to social conservatives dominate the party’s electoral messaging, making the big winner last night a prime minister named Chrystia Freeland, oops, Justin Trudeau?
If the Conservatives heard the hint in the 2019 election that their party needs a wider, deeper urban Central Canada base to win, they ignored it by voting in O’Toole over the safer choice in the now-completely-finished-in-politics Peter MacKay.
O’Toole’s campaign harkened back to a Canadian Alliance mindset while opening empathetic arms to social conservatives he would need for second or third-choice support as progressive balloting went on.
It was a daring strategy that worked like a charm.
The members who felt MacKay was too soft on the fundamentals, expanding too far into the mushy middle for their comfort, gave O’Toole a surprisingly strong first ballot opening which grew with social conservative help while MacKay’s support stagnated.
For O’Toole, the first priority now is obvious. People need to get to know him in a hurry in case there’s a fall election triggered by Trudeau’s Throne Speech next month.
And knowing him means knowing precisely where he stands on abortion files, his climate change fighting plan and which tricky policy path through the pandemic he’ll take to rein in spending while retaining a strong safety net for COVID-19 casualties.
He also has to elevate impressive third-place finisher Leslyn Lewis to a prominent influencer role within the party without making her abortion views an albatross around the party’s electoral neck.
The Erin O’Toole I’ve known since his byelection win in 2012 is an intelligent, friendly-faced and articulate politician who could attract a wider following given time to gel.
That was the easy-going moderate MP who finished third in the 2017 leadership race.
The unsmiling version who thundered against the left from a harder-right pulpit in the 2020 race was not that same person.
Which Erin O’Toole emerges as his leadership takes root will decide the fate of the Conservative party in the next election.
Played correctly, O’Toole can beat a Team Trudeau saddled with ethical lapses, pandemic missteps and benches filled with underproducing players.
But if the new boss is merely the same as the old boss, the Conservatives will once again miss scoring on an open net.
