Angry in the Great White North

Joe Volpe ended up with a miserable 4.6% of the full delegate count.

Now that's no worse than Ken Dryden or Scott Brison, but unlike those two newly minted Liberals, Volpe has had decades to prepare for this day. Dryden first stood for election in June 2004, and Brison crossed the floor from the old Progressive Conservatives to join the Liberals in December 2003. Joe Volpe has been a Liberal since 1981, a Liberal member of parliament since 1988, and has had a seat in Liberal cabinets since 2003.

So yeah, he didn't meet expectations.

That make things tricky for Volpe. Any hope that he could be a serious kingmaker is gone. The four leading contenders can afford to ignore Volpe. To block Michael Ignatieff, Gerard Kennedy, Stephane Dion, and Bob Rae would have to join up. That would put them over the top, but just barely. Based on the numbers I'm seeing, that would result 53.2% of the delegates. That's assuming every delegate followed. They might not. Some might sit on their hands, some might go to Ignatieff. It would only take about a hundred or so delegates to keep the trio from breaking 50% (possibly fewer delegates if a significant number go to Ignatieff, since each is a vote denied Kennedy-Dion-Rae while simultaneously improving Ignatieff's count). So the also-rans have some value, in that their support would nail down a victory for Kennedy-Dion-Rae.

And that's where Volpe's problem lies. They don't need him. They're much better off striking a deal with Dryden or Brison, or both. Brison is strong in Atlantic Canada, and the gay thing can't hurt. Dryden is popular and well-liked just about everywhere.

Volpe, on the other hand, is damaged goods. Best to leave him on the shelf.

With Brison and Dryden in play, Volpe can't even offer to help out Ignatieff. He just doesn't bring enough delegates to the negotiations to make a difference, even it weren't for the baggage he's carrying.

Volpe would be rendered irrelevant, but even worse, it would happen very publicly.

He can't afford for that to happen, not if he wants a future in politics in the Liberal Party. No other party would have him, so he's got to make nice with the Liberals.

So he has a choice to make. He can fight on anyway. But to do that he has to deal with the $20,000 fine. If he pays it, and he is ignored at the leadership convention in a scenario like the one I just described, his donors are going to very upset that he blew their money on a hopeless cause, with absolutely nothing to show for it. If he fights it, he will still lose at the convention, but now he'll look irrelevant and desperate. Of course, that assumes he wins his fight against the fine. No guarantee of that at all.

If he doesn't pay it, he'll be thrown out of the race a month ahead of the convention. Again, a very public humiliation. That leaves the option of withdrawing. If he withdraws, the fine goes away, since the only punishment for not paying was to be thrown out of the leadership race. His status as a member of the Liberal Party is not affected. He also has the opportunity of throwing his support to one of the other leading candidates, which undermines the value of Dryden's or Brison's support later, enhancing his own value. If he's lucky, the candidate he endorses will actually show up to the news conference to accept Volpe's endorsement. But even if he doesn't (and I expect he will show up, but only if the news conference is very brief and very carefully controlled), the embarassment for Volpe will be mitigated by the perception that Volpe was taking some control of the situation. In the long term, that might help rehabilitate him, especially if he backs the eventual winner.

Of course, Volpe is just as likely to pull out of the race, and then ruin whatever chance there is of eventually fixing the mess he is in by going on another version of his rant about shadowy forces of anti-Italian bigotry being responsible for his problems. That he might do that is the number one reason the endorsed candidate, if there is one, would not appear with him at the news conference. Will Volpe's advisors be able to keep him from self-destructing like that? Will Volpe be able to resist the baiting of reporters sure to bring up the allegation? Is any other candidate going to risk the chance of being in a photograph standing beside a raging Volpe?