Did Don Meredith chicken out?

Or was it a weird campaign manager who feared an interview with The Bulletin

By Frank Touby –

The Tory outside hope for replacing Bill Graham in Toronto Centre Rosedale won’t talk to The Bulletin about his proposals to improve life for his constituents in the event they actually elect him. The riding has been a burial ground for Tory candidates who usually agree to run only so they can make points in the party and perhaps land plum jobs at the public trough.

Don Meredith, a north Toronto preacher, religious leader and landscape company owner replaced a perfectly fine candidate, Mark Warner, when control-freak Steve Harper reportedly feared Warner would speak out on social issues so important to his riding’s constituents.

Meredith may be as much a control freak as his party leader. His press aide, Monica, quizzed me up, down and sideways about what questions I would ask her guy—a 43-year-old “multitasking” father of two—when we meet.

Naturally, I didn’t say. Nor had I said when, earlier, Bob Rae sought an interview.

You just don’t prepare a candidate to answer questions about his or her knowledge of riding needs. Otherwise it’s a sign the candidate knows too little about the needs he’s supposed to serve.

Monica kept insisting that I tell her what questions I’d ask Don.

I couldn’t do that, I said. He’s going to be asked questions in all-candidates meetings that aren’t prepared, why would a journalist submit a list of questions.

Apparently Don is more or less of a one-issue candidate and it’s mainly got to do with youth violence and justice matters.

Was I going to ask about those? No, I replied. Other stuff.

There are more pressing needs in Toronto-Centre Rosedale, after all, than just building a bunch of privately owned jails and dumping offenders in them for long stints…if that’s what Don’s Tory bosses wanted. Dunno. Don’t care right now. We’ve got all sorts of other issues that are quite specific.

How much does Don know about his potential future constituents and how can he help? That’s that’s the real question.

So after a long chat with Monica that mainly had me ducking questions about what I’d ask her guy, it finally came down that I’d meet Don at his Bloor Street campaign headquarters at 10 a.m. in two days.

Then, the day before, I get this call left on my answering device: click to hear.

So I call the number it came from and a guy identifying himself as Paul tells me that because I wouldn’t say what I’d ask Don, they pulled out. It’s Paul Connor, Meredith’s benighted campaign chief.

He said I’d been mean to another Tory candidate in The Bulletin and they didn’t want Don to experience that. Turns out The Bulletin hadn’t said a bad thing about Connor’s guy. We even published a letter that candidate wrote the paper without commenting on it or on him.

Conor said that although the big papers would refuse to disclose their questions in advance, community papers would. He mentioned Town Crier, where Don was quoted saying basically nothing much except he wouldn’t hold it against gays for their preferences insofar as his being an MP was concerned. The Bulletin isn’t the Town Crier and we’re a lot edgier.

However, all this notwithstanding, it’s a wash that Bob Rae is going to be crowned. Let’s hope he’s better for his constituents than Bill Graham was.