Brad Trost MP Saskatchewan University decided to run as a principled, 100 per cent conservative, including unapologetically standing for life and family. He surprised pundits and opponents when he finished fourth in the 2016 leadership race.
When he entered politics, Brad Trost wanted to defend the principles on which Canada was built: limited government, individual freedom, faith in our Creator, respect for life, and respect for parents and the natural family as the building blocks of a strong, healthy society. He had seen these principles under attack from left-wing activists and their allies in academia and mainstream media determined to tear society down and rebuild it in their own image. Brad wanted to do his part to uphold and to protect them.
In March 2016, Joseph Ben-Ami and I approached Brad about running to be leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). He thanked us for our confidence but declined. Gerelt, his wife, and Brad had only recently become parents, and he wanted to devote what time he had apart from serving as Member of Parliament to his young family. But, then, something happened.
At the CPC policy convention in Vancouver in May 2016, Brad was dismayed when our party’s leadership helped orchestrate the overturning of our policy commitment to the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman forsaking all others. Brad was surprised that he was among a very small number of elected officials prepared to stand up for traditional marriage as well as for families, children, and seniors.
When asked during a live television interview if he was planning to run for leader of our party, Brad told the CPAC interviewer that he had not planned to. But he was thinking he might have to run in order to make sure that the things so many Conservatives care about were defended and promoted in the leadership campaign.
I watched this interview live, from Calgary. I called Joseph Ben-Ami in Ottawa.
Not long after the policy convention, Joseph and I got in touch with Brad. We asked if he was, now, prepared to run for leader. After talking it over with Gerelt, Brad decided to pursue running. But he let us know that he and Gerelt were planning to visit her family in Mongolia for a long-planned trip for the month of August 2016. Joseph and I organized an exploratory committee to take the temperature among potential supporters.
We arranged an exploratory tour in July 2016 meeting opinion leaders, potential supporters, and media. In an interview with Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sunat Canada Christian College in Toronto, Brad made public that he was exploring a run for leader of the CPC. When Joe pressed him on what kind of Conservative he was, Brad replied, “I am one hundred per cent Conservative.” I proposed “100 percent Conservative” become the tagline for his campaign once we decided to launch.
Gerelt and Brad left for Mongolia.
By mid-August, pressure mounted to launch Brad’s campaign for leader. With the help of Mike Patton, new director of media relations, Brad announced his campaign … from Mongolia!
In September 2016, the “Brad Trost, 100 percent Conservative” campaign got underway. We recruited a chief financial officer, prepared Brad’s application including hundreds of party members’ signatures for submission to the CPC, and made the required filings with Elections Canada.
Brad made clear from the outset that he was pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, and pro-parental rights, opposed to the man-made climate change thesis and against transgenderism. After nearly three weeks of trying to provoke Brad into running away from these commitments, attempting to play “gotcha politics,” the Parliamentary Press Gallery told Mike Patton, “Okay, we get it . . . he’s pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-parental rights . . . Enough, already!”
Brad Trost was 100 percent Conservative!
But when Brad spoke to party members and supporters and caucus colleagues who shared his commitments to families, children, and seniors, they told him they didn’t think his campaign could go anywhere. They refused to donate. They would not volunteer. They declined to endorse his candidacy.
They did not believe Brad’s campaign was real.
We struggled to find the resources to mount a credible campaign. But as Brad travelled across Canada, participating in the party’s all-candidates debates and meeting with Conservatives and people who were not yet party members but shared his perspective, we started to make headway. Mike Patton and Brad experimented with video campaign updates. Joseph and I worked on getting Brad’s 100 percent Conservative message out, donations came in, and membership sales mounted.
A series of Facebook ads opposing Bill C-16 on transgenderism, and supporting parental rights and traditional marriage so outraged the media elites that CBC-TV’s This Hour Has 22 Minutesbroadcast a three-minute rant putting down parental rights as “ignorance,” and preaching that undermining traditional marriage is “progress.”
Brad spoke out against Bill C-16 on behalf of parental rights. Brad spoke for Ontarians betrayed by Patrick Brown who sought the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario leadership positioned as a social conservative, then abandoned those who made him leader. Patrick’s advertising contractor tweeted asking why a Saskatchewan MP was talking about Ontario politics. Brad was speaking on behalf of fellow social conservatives who were uncertain about getting involved federally. Brad wanted to speak for them.
Brad asked party members by e-mail if the next leader of the CPC should march in gay pride parades, as several of his competitors for the leadership had done in Toronto, in June 2016. The response from party members and others when it was leaked to the press gallery practically “broke the internet!”
Shortly after the March 31 membership sales deadline, we told Brad that he could finish in the top five in a field of 14, likely in fourth place or even higher. And then, we told Brad not to tell anybody.
Up till then, “no one” among the pundits, opinion leaders and party officials – even among people who should have supported Brad – believed the campaign was real. We advised Brad to hold back how well we thought he would do till the announcement night, when all doubt would be removed.
Here’s what we wanted to hold back: We had sold more than 30,000 memberships. About 10,000 had been sold in the last week or so before the March 31 deadline. But we refused to tell Brad the real numbers. We were afraid Brad would be tempted to share the number with his competitors and caucus colleagues.
These 30,000-plus new members and renewals were pro-life, concerned about parental rights, opposed to the man-made climate change thesis, disillusioned Ontario PC members, and New Canadians like Brad’s wife, Gerelt, who wanted a leader who spoke for small business, families, and the principles that led them to choose Canada.
The mail-in ballot was new. Even experienced campaigners found it confusing. But with good advice, we anticipated this and put together step-by-step instructions, and mailed them to Brad’s supporters timed to arrive about the same time as the ballots. Two other campaign teams liked the instructions so well they distributed versions of them to their candidates’ supporters.
We urged Brad’s supporters to make Pierre Lemieux their ballot second choice. We wanted to make sure that the vote for a fellow social conservative was maximized for him as well as for Brad.
We found more potential supporters on the party membership rolls. Our “get out the vote” (GOTV) list numbered 48,000 party members in total leading up to May 27. A key group of volunteers made 160,000 live, GOTV calls to assist supporters with their ballots. A group of New Canadians organized a social media GOTV campaign for Brad Trost supporters with a translated version of the ballot instructions.
On May 27 2017, the CPC’s leadership vote was to be announced at the Toronto Congress Centre in Etobicoke, Ontario. In the speeches on May 26, Brad Trost spoke for social conservatives on national television in front of a giant Canadian flag graphic.
Could we have been prouder.
On May 27, hundreds of party members assembled at the Congress Centre with a large contingent of media in the press pool. Pundits predicted that “Brad Trost might finish thirteenth” … at best.
But then, the first-round ballot results were announced. When the results went up on the big screen there was an audible gasp and mumbled expletives as party members, the pundits, and “smart people” saw that the vote totals put Brad Trost in fourth place, both on raw votes and the riding-by-riding points system.
In the next several rounds, Brad’s fourth place held as others dropped off the ballot. At the eighth or ninth round, Brad briefly moved up to third place. More audible gasps. More expletives in the press pool.
When there were four candidates left, Brad dropped off the ballot in fourth place. Most Trost supporters’ ballot votes went to Andrew Scheer, pushing him into a close second place to frontrunner Maxime Bernier. When Erin O’Toole dropped off, Scheer had won by the narrowest of margins ahead of Maxime Bernier.
We had not won, but Gerelt and Brad were elated.
An unapologetic, 100 percent Conservative had finished near the top of the results in a hotly contested race for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition.
What a night!
We believed that government policy in all areas – taxes, the economy, the environment, national defence, and foreign relations – should reflect and respect these core principles. Brad Trost offered a platform that did just that.
Openly. Proudly.
Canadians from all regions – including New Canadians – responded positively to our message. We defied the pundits, finishing fourth in a field of 14 candidates in a major, national party.
We social conservatives proved that we can make a difference.
Russell E. Kuykendall is is a Peace River Country farm-raised, seminary-trained, ordained minister and principal with BlueCommittee.Org and Ditchley.ca who sometimes fancies himself a political theorist. He served as Deputy Campaign Manager to the Brad Trost Campaign for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership (2016-2017), and as Campaign Manager of the Tanya Granic Allen Campaign for the Ontario PC leadership (2018).
