The big red mess

THE LEDE

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“It’s all about f-cking egos:” Nate Erskine-Smith’s claim of “serious irregularities” in Saturday’s four-way nomination contest in Scarborough has detonated an all-out civil war in Liberal land.

Saturday’s result was far from the rout some had predicted for Erskine-Smith. By around 4 p.m., Ahsanul Hafiz’s campaign believed it had enough support — around 60 per cent — to clinch the nomination on the first ballot. Qadira Jackson’s campaign projected Hafiz ahead of Erskine-Smith, 55 per cent to 17 per cent.

“If we can’t close this out on the first ballot, a lot of people will have lied to us,” a source on Hafiz’s campaign said.

Erskine-Smith’s team, buoyed by a late endorsement from Prime Minister Mark Carney, was cautious. For much of the week before the contest, his campaign had signalled concerns over some 1,200 rejected memberships. By Saturday, the team wasn’t expecting a first-ballot win — one operative dismissed their rivals’ math as “bullshit” — but believed they still had a path.

In the end: Erskine-Smith led by nine votes on the first ballot, but couldn’t eke out a win on the second, losing by 19 votes to the Domino’s Pizza restaurateur — who had a second-ballot deal with Jackson. 

Erskine-Smith, who met with his team Monday, is now challenging that result. An hour-long call with roughly two dozen campaign team members — where participants traded stories about what they witnessed during voting — ended with clear agreement that an appeal was “imperative.”