TORONTO – Progressive Conservatives across Ontario have a second and final chance today to vote for their new party leader, with the winner to be announced on Saturday.
It’s a two-person battle between deputy PC leader Christine Elliott, the widow of former finance minister Jim Flaherty, and Barrie MP Patrick Brown, a federal Conservative backbencher.
Every party member is eligible to vote, and the 36-year-old Brown claims he’s leading the race because he sold more than 41,000 PC memberships.
However, the 60-year-old Elliott, who claims to have sold 34,000 memberships, says Brown’s support is concentrated in a small number of ridings and is not nearly as widespread as hers.
Each of the 107 ridings gets 100 points for the new leader, so having support all across Ontario is just as important as how many memberships were sold.
Elliott, who was third in the PC’s 2009 leadership race, says Brown’s views are outside the Ontario mainstream, while he calls her “Liberal-lite” and insists she represents the “same old same old” from the Tory establishment.
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