I never would have thought that the first political party I ever joined would be the Conservative Party of Canada.

Not only had I never voted for them, I had expended a certain amount of effort (and money) trying to ensure that others didn’t vote for them, either.

But Trump is certainly an inspirational figure, in that he has inspired people to act in ways they never previously did. In the US, you see it in the huge number of protesters, the anger evident at town halls, the number of phone calls made to members of Congress.

In Canada, I think it’s at least partly responsible for the record number of people who joined the Conservative Party of Canada this time out.

Anecdotally, some people joined the party just to stop Kellie Leitch from winning the leadership.

I’m an anecdote! (And I’m still hoping to find and attribute the article where the columnist wrote the above sentence (or one similar to that), but onward for now!)

Many months ago, Kellie Leitch, first in the leadership race but not making much headway, decided to hitch her train to Trump wagon and immediately vaulted to first place in the polls. And this time I do have her exact quote:

Tonight, our American cousins threw out the elites and elected Donald Trump as their next president.

It’s an exciting message and one that we need delivered in Canada as well.

— Kellie Leitch, November 9, 2016

Lord.

I was not in a happy place after that US election and the very idea that something similar could happen here… Well, I felt I had to do something.

There was the question of the ethics of joining a party you whose policies you didn’t necessarily, entirely, agree with. But, the fact is I was qualified to join (Canadian, didn’t belong to any other political party) and they were perfectly happy to take my $15 and sign me up.

And, my goals were not to harm the party. I wasn’t trying to saddle them with some horribly un-electable leader. In fact, I was hoping to find someone I actually could see myself voting for in a federal election.

Amazingly, I did, in one Michael Chong, a very principled politician with a set of policies I could get behind. Unfortunately, his stance against Islamophobia and, especially, his promotion of a revenue-neutral carbon tax led to him being booed at every single candidate’s debate.

But still, I had my guy. Only, this was a ranked ballot, so I couldn’t stop there. To put Kellie Leitch last, I had to make decisions about all the other candidates, too. And there were 13 of them! (At one point, 14.) The early assumptions that at least some of these more obscure, hopeless candidates would drop out—just didn’t happen.

There was so much email, people. 13 people emailing me about policies I often disagreed with, often mixed in with an assumption that I hated the Liberals. (Plus, then the party started asking me for more money. As if.)

But I got there. I managed to put 9 of them in order (of a maximum 10 allowed). Erin O’Toole got my #2, simply by being the only other candidate with any kind of plan to combat climate change—even if it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Chong’s.

(If there is one thing that drives me most mental about this party, it is their refusal to do anything about the biggest environmental problem the human race has ever faced. It’s nice that all but one of the candidates now admit the problem is real, but doesn’t that also make it even worse their “plan” is to just watch the planet burn? Anyway…)

We were out when results came in, so I followed along on Twitter as I could.

anyway, here’s how the first ballot broke down #cpcldr pic.twitter.com/FRDF52etl8

— colin horgan (@cfhorgan) May 27, 2017

Polls (plus all the booing) had told me Chong’s chances of actually winning this thing were, uh, remote, so I was pretty happy with the results. Fifth is not a bad showing, overall. And he beat Kellie Leitch!

I wasn’t the only one pleased about that.

Results show it’s better to run on something than on nothing. Michael Chong got booed heartily at every debate, and beat 9 candidates.

— Paul Wells (@InklessPW) May 27, 2017

8th place for Lisa Raitt, with 3.34% of the vote.

7th to Kellie Leitch. Excuse me….HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAH

— Paul Wells (@InklessPW) May 27, 2017

The goal here was for someone to get to 50% to take this thing. After each round, the bottom vote-getter dropped off and whoever voted for them #1 got their votes distributed to their #2 choice, and so on.

Well, it was a squeaker. It went the maximum number of rounds. Michael Chong stayed on to round 10, at which point my vote transferred to # 2 O’Toole, then finally to my #6 Maxime Bernier (choices 3-5 already gone by then), a candidate running on an interesting but somewhat radical Libertarian platform. However, on that final ballot, Bernier was eclipsed by Andrew Scheer, my #7 choice.

Political life in Canada would have been more interesting had Bernier won. We might have had debates about a number of issues that are unanimous among political parties now, but maybe shouldn’t be—like supply management and “corporate welfare”.

Scheer is a more boring choice, and also one I don’t see myself voting for. He had few policy ideas, and the ones he did, I found kind of dumb. It’s kind of still Stephen Harper, but with a more agreeable tone.

Still, a more agreeable tone is a welcome thing, as the simple nastiness of the Harper years was very off-putting and hardly necessary.

Today I decided to check how things played out in my riding, and was truly shocked at the results of the first ballot:

1. Brad Trost – 29.4%
2. Michael Chong – 19.4%
3. Maxime Bernier – 15.9%
4. Andrew Scheer – 10.5%
5. Erin O’Toole – 8.3%
6. Pierre Lemieux – 7.6%
7. Kellie Leitch – 5.1%
8. Lisa Raitt – 2.1

(The rest earned less than 1%.)

Brad Trost is an anti-gay, pro-life candidate, who doesn’t believe in climate change. He did far better in the overall race, as well, than anyone had been predicting.

All a reminder that those social conservatives, who really have no other home in politics, are highly motivated to get party memberships and vote. (Me, I didn’t rank him at all, would you believe.) But if you actually want to win this swing riding, note that Chong got twice the vote than the eventual winner….

So, that was sort of interesting. But my work here is done, and I’m so happy to have unsubscribed from all Conservative email lists!

PS: Should add that I actually didn’t unsubscribe from Michael Chong’s email list, and he just sent a lovely “Thank you for your support” email. He’s still young—remains to be seen how much of a future he still has in this party.