Patrick Brown’s name was scraped from the door of the office of the leader of the official opposition while Progressive Conservatives huddled to pick his successor just down the hall.
Conservative MPPs gathered for an emergency caucus meeting Friday only 31 hours after Brown resigned over a sexual misconduct scandal involving teenagers.
With an election set for June 7, Tories are split on whether the leader chosen by caucus can lead them into the spring campaign or if they should hold a contest so 200,000 PC members can pick a new chief.
“Obviously the executive is going to make that determination,” said party president Rick Dykstra.
“We obviously want to know who our interim leader is going be, get some sage advice from the caucus … and move to next steps,” said Dykstra, stressing he was blindsided by the allegations against Brown, a close ally and fellow former Conservative MP in prime minister Stephen Harper’s government.
“The executive, based on the constitution, has the opportunity to come up with a strategy as to how that would take place regardless of who’s chosen.”
Dykstra emphasized there is ample time and enough strong candidates to hold a leadership contest for party members.
“One of the fortunate pieces of this unfortunate circumstance that we had a leadership race not that long ago (in 2015) therefore there’s some very good rules that were set out in that process,” the PC president said.
“We think we’ve got a good base to work from,” he said, adding mail-in ballots or online voting could be used to expedite things.
“Those are all options that are on the table right now.”
But MPP Vic Fedeli (Nipissing), the front-runner to be parliamentary leader, said this is not the time for a divisive and polarizing leadership contest with only 132 days until Election Day.
“You can marshal all your time, all your energy, all your resources, have a great big two-month-long infighting party, shooting ourselves in the foot while Kathleen Wynne has free rein to be out there unchallenged,” he told reporters as he arrived at the Legislature.
“We need to be decisive, pick our leader, let’s get on to this,” he added. “We are smack dab in the middle of an election. Let’s not fool ourselves.”
MPP Lisa MacLeod, the first member of caucus to express support for the women who came out with allegations against Brown, dropped a bombshell saying she had heard “similar things.”
They were reported to the party’s war room “two or three times before Christmas.”
“I’m not going to get into specifics,” she said on the way into the meeting with fellow MPPs, adding she was “quite relieved” when CTV reported allegations from two women about Brown.
“My heart was very warmed that those two women had the courage to come forward in this climate.”
MacLeod said her message to the women is “you got this. I’m proud of you.”
MacLeod also said Brown should be kicked out of the PC caucus to sit as an independent, a decision some other MPPs said should be left to the new leader.
Brown, who has denied the allegations from the two women, was not at the meeting that was expected to take several hours, with some MPPs calling in from out of town or vacation spots.
Dykstra said there are some great candidates from outside caucus who could lead the party.
While he was careful not to mention any names, these include lawyer Caroline Mulroney, who is running in York-Simcoe, and former CivicAction head Rod Phillips, the PC candidate in Ajax.
Both Mulroney and Phillips are considering runs if there is a leadership contest.