Welcome to the fray, Jeremy Broadhurst. As the just appointed campaign chair for the liberals this year, you have your work cut out for you. I would not say the job is impossible but Easter is over and I am sure God restricts us to only one resurrection per year. Getting Justin Trudeau’s liberals campaign for re-election back to life will be a tough chore.
But you have to admit that any guy who could have us believing that foreign minister Cynthia Freeland is at least a foot taller than actual, has to be a miracle worker in anyone’s book. As the minister’s chief of staff, Broadhurst backed her up during some very tough negotiations in Washington. She might not have come off a miracle-worker but surviving the melee counts for something.
And it is too bad Broadhurst is probably having to work on the if-come. Fund-raising for the liberals has been tanking and there might not be much on the dinner table for a while.
But when you realize that Broadhurst took on the tough jobs in the last federal election, while back-stopping the group of dilettantes around school teacher Justin Trudeau, you are inclined to give him a look. Justin might have been raised in a quasi-political household but his father learned to let the politicos do their jobs.
Broadhurst has nowhere near the seasoning of the late Senator Keith Davey. Nor does he have the training for the job that Keith gave to Senator David Smith.
A funny footnote on David Smith was that he had never won an election as a candidate without my help. He called me when the writ was dropped for the 1993 election and asked me to spend the election commuting to Barrie from Toronto to run the liberal campaign in what was then York-Simcoe riding. I do not recall what I told him. It was probably something terse. It amused me later that York-Simcoe was the only riding the liberals lost in Ontario. David complained to me that Jean Chrétien kept telling, anyone who would listen, that it was David’s fault the liberals lost York-Simcoe.
But the point of this is that Broadhurst is taking on this campaign about a year too late. He is starting from the bottom of a hole that Justin Trudeau dug with the help of Gerald Butts and company.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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