The federal Conservative leadership race has entered its final phase heading into the May 27 vote.
With two months to go, the race remains as crowded as ever, with campaign efforts still at a hot pace.
A critical juncture was reached last week, as a couple of important deadlines came and went.
March 31 was the final date for any registered candidates to withdraw from the ballot.
Despite speculation the large field of leadership candidates might be pared down by the deadline, no one withdrew. That means all 14 candidates who were officially registered prior to March 31 will be on the ballot.
The voting will be done across the country either by mail-in balloting or by appearing in person at a polling station, with voters ranking the candidates from one to 10.
The other milestone was the deadline for individuals to purchase Conservative Party memberships to be eligible to vote. That deadline was March 28.
After that deadline passed, a number of campaigns released figures as to how many memberships they had sold.
The Kellie Leitch campaign claimed they sold 30,000 memberships, near the top of the field. Meanwhile, the Kevin O’Leary campaign claimed more than 33,000.
At the Conservative leadership forum in Lloydminster last Thursday night, other candidates were dismissive of numbers being floated by the other campaigns.
“The membership numbers that people are throwing around are completely unverifiable,” said Andrew Scheer, MP for Regina-Qu’Appelle and widely seen as of one of the race’s front-runners.
While he did not divulge his campaign’s membership totals, Scheer expressed confidence that his numbers were at or near the top of the field. He pointed in particular to strong fundraising numbers.
“We’ve exceeded our expectations. We just raised $35,000 today alone in the last 24 hours. So we’re ending this quarter with a lot of momentum.”
By the weekend, the Scheer campaign touted numbers indicating they raised $100,000 over the final two days of March.
Chris Alexander told reporters in Lloydminster his campaign had sold 3,000 memberships that were confirmed as accepted by the party, but he also added they believe they may have signed up as many as 6,000.
“I think for someone who started relatively late and who’s signing up a lot of people in urban Canada as well as across Quebec and the rest of Canada, that those are solid numbers that have made a difference.”
As for overall membership numbers, he believes upwards of 200,000 may have joined the Conservative Party, “and that would be really good news.”
Alexander said he isn’t stopping, however, and wants to see even more people joining up and being enthusiastic about the party.
“We need to keep rekindling the flames of a movement,” Alexander said. “The party’s one thing, having a membership is one thing. It only matters if people are fired up.”
Pierre Lemieux, former MP for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, expressed confidence his campaign was gaining momentum.
“We have done so well,” Lemieux said. “You’re going to start seeing some fundraising numbers in terms of the number of people that have donated to my campaign, and just number of donations. I’m really impressed with what we have accomplished. I’m really impressed with the progress we are making, by with how far we have come since the very beginning.”
This week, the Lemieux campaign released first-quarter fundraising numbers of 2,700 donations totalling $225,000.
The other Saskatchewan candidate in the race, Saskatoon-University MP Brad Trost, was confident he would benefit from strong voter participation from those members who are signed up.
“A lot of my supporters are ideologically motivated,” Trost said. “Those tend to be the highest turnout voters. So we’re going to work hard, we’re not going to take anything for granted.”
Trost adds no one is going to win it on the first ballot, so “I want people’s second choices, I want their third choices, and I think we may even need people’s fourth and to some degree even fifth choices. That’s how competitive this is.”
