In opting not to seek the Ontario Progressive Conservative nomination for a seat in the legislature, Toronto councillor Doug Ford cited family loyalty: running the re-election campaign of his brother, scandal-plagued Mayor Rob Ford, is his priority for the next eight months, he says.
That may very well be true, but there are three other major reasons for the councillor to put his provincial ambitions on hold, at least for the moment.
The PC private eye
Anyone who wants to seek a Progressive Conservative nomination has to undergo an extensive vetting process. It includes, among other things, a credit check, interview and questionnaire to determine if there is anything embarrassing in a candidate's past that could come back to haunt them.
One source said it goes further than that. In cases where the party believes it is warranted, it also has a security consulting firm track down a prospective candidate's friends and acquaintances to dig up any possible dirt.
The worst thing a candidate can do, the source said, is lie about something the party later determines to be true.
Given the allegations swirling around Mr. Ford – a Globe and Mail investigation last year spoke to 10 anonymous sources who said he was a high-volume hashish dealer in the 1980s – the Tories would have delved into Mr. Ford's past, the source said. Mr. Ford, for his part, denies that he was ever a high-volume drug dealer.
If the party turns up anything questionable in its investigation, it can rule a candidate ineligible for the nomination. In some cases, this process turns nasty. When the party blocked Maddie Di Muccio, a town councillor north of Toronto, from seeking its nod in Newmarket-Aurora this month on the basis of her past criticisms of Mr. Hudak, it led to a public war of words.
It's not hard to imagine the acrimony – and the damage it would have done to both sides – had something similar happened to Mr. Ford.
Hudak's hard line
Near the end of last year, Mr. Hudak delivered a stark message to his caucus: any time we have to talk about you is time we're not talking about our policies. His meaning, according to a Tory source, was clear. MPPs and candidates were to keep a lid on their personal lives and not allow such things to take media attention away from the party platform in the next election.
Publicly, Mr. Hudak adopted a similar hard line on party discipline. In September, he demoted MPPs Peter Shurman and Randy Hillier from his shadow cabinet – Mr. Shurman after a dispute over using taxpayer money to subsidize his apartment and Mr. Hillier for breaking with the party's position over a labour bill.
Then, last month, he stripped Windsor-area candidate Dave Brister of his nomination for publicly disparaging a PC MPP and attacking party policy on so-called "right to work" legislation.
For Doug Ford – a man who once publicly attacked the integrity of both the Toronto police chief and a top Tory fundraiser in the same day – the signal was pretty obvious. Mr. Hudak would tolerate no offsides on his team.
And having set a precedent with Mr. Hiller and Mr. Brister, the PC leader would virtually have been bound to similarly punish Mr. Ford had he made inflammatory comments or defied party discipline.
A party divided
When Mr. Ford first announced his intention to seek the Tory nomination last year, the party welcomed him with open arms. Mr. Hudak pronounced himself "thrilled."
That all abruptly changed after reports emerged last May of a video of the mayor appearing to smoke crack cocaine and making homophobic remarks. Tory House Leader Jim Wilson declared Doug Ford was "not our candidate" and "I don't even know the guy." Mr. Hudak dropped his laudatory language about the Fords.
At first, PC insiders confided the party was divided: some wanted nothing to do with the colourful councillor and his brother; others, however, pointed to their strong poll numbers as reason to keep working with them.
That changed after Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair confirmed the so-called crack video's existence in November, followed by the mayor's confession to smoking the drug.
While some MPPs would continue to laud Mr. Ford's fiscal record, privately, most Tories at Queen's Park flatly said they did not want him to run for the party. He would be a distraction during a campaign, they said, taking up valuable air time that could be spent hammering home their message.
Mr. Ford said this week he had never felt any antagonism from the party. One Tory source, however, said Mr. Ford was aware how Queen's Park PCs felt about his possible candidacy.
Adrian Morrow is The Globe's Ontario politics reporter.