It began in secret, but Ryan Beedie is now ready to come clean on his plan to rally more than 20 business leaders to the cause of Kevin Falcon's bid to become B.C.'s next premier.
Christy Clark has had condo king Bob Rennie, among others, in her corner as she seeks to win the leadership of the B.C. Liberals.
Now, her rival Mr. Falcon will have B.C.'s biggest landlord of industrial space on his side.
The 42-year-old president of the Beedie Group will be taking a break from his responsibilities owning and managing seven million square feet of industrial space in order to go to unusual lengths to make sure Mr. Falcon wins.
"I will be personally going to anyone associated with me, anyone connected to my company - every supplier, subtrade, tenant, client, anyone who I have ever done business with," Mr. Beedie said in an interview Sunday.
"And I will be communicating with them on a personal level why I believe this is the right candidate, why I am doing it, and I will encourage them to support him. If they don't, I completely respect that. People have total free will, whatever they do.
"All I want to do is put my name behind it and hope they come on board."
And Mr. Beedie said he won't be alone.
He is organizing Falcon 20/20 - a plan to roll out more than 20 business leaders in support of Mr. Falcon, leaders who are supposed to be doing the same as part of a bid to rally thousands of supporters to join the B.C. Liberals to bolster support for the candidate.
"They will all be publicly endorsing Kevin at some point over the next week or two. We'll decide how to roll that out," he said.
"I am actually north of 20 and growing," Mr. Beedie said.
He declined to name them. "In many cases, they are very well-known, reputable people. They employ a lot of people - younger business leaders, smaller business leaders, who are passionate about this thing."
The team will be working against a Feb. 4 cutoff in membership sales ahead of the Feb. 26 vote on a successor to Premier Gordon Campbell.
The drive will be to get people to join the party online, he said. "It takes two minutes to sign up online. Ten dollars. Two minutes. Boom. You get to vote in an election which will be one of the most powerful votes people will ever have - directly electing a premier."
Mr. Falcon has had an edge in earning Mr. Beedie's support. The two have been friends since they went to Simon Fraser University together.
"He gets things done," Mr. Beedie said. "My network of people in the business community that I am connected with completely respect Kevin because he gets results. He delivers. He will tell you the way it is, even if it's not popular, even if it's not what someone wants to hear.
"This position is CEO of British Columbia. If it was my company, if I was going to hire one of these five candidates to run a division of my company, there's no question he would be the guy."
Still, Mr. Beedie said he will support whoever wins the leadership.
Only a few weeks ago, Mr. Beedie was trying to conceal all of this.
In a Dec. 23 e-mail obtained by The Globe and Mail, Mr. Beedie and John O'Neill, another Falcon supporter, described a secret effort called the Falcon Business Leaders Network with a mission to sell up to 10,000 party memberships for Mr. Falcon.
"Our group will be private and not announced to the public, particularly as a couple of you have expressed concern about the optics, should the other candidate win," the e-mail said.
"If anyone asks, we are fundraising oriented, when, in fact, we are nothing of the sort. Our sole objective is to maximize the number of new members we can sign up who have committed their support for Kevin."
But Mr. Beedie said Sunday that all the cloak-and-dagger stuff was a reflection of his lack of sophistication in political organizing.
"That was the thought then. My mindset is different on this now completely," he said of the conspiratorial language of his earlier e-mail.
Ian Bailey