TORONTO - Veteran Progressive Conservative Norm Sterling, who recently lost his party's nomination for the Oct. 6 Ontario election, said Wednesday he may have to support a Liberal candidate this fall.
After serving 34 years as the PC member for the Ottawa-area riding of Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Sterling lost the nomination to Jack MacLaren, a former director of the Ontario Landowners Association.
Fellow Tory Randy Hillier, a past president of the rural-based landowners group, campaigned on behalf of MacLaren, working against his caucus colleague.
MacLaren "represents a very, very different political thought than I," said Sterling, who refused to criticize his caucus colleagues or Opposition Leader Tim Hudak for failing to help him secure his 10th nomination.
"I know this game is a team game, so any comment that I would make about any part of the system, whether it's the political party, my leader, any member of my caucus, hurts all of them," Sterling told reporters on his first day at Queen's Park after losing the nomination. "I just have too many close friends whom I admire and love to (do that)."
However, Sterling said he wouldn't be able to campaign on behalf of MacLaren and the Tories if his close friend, Eli El-Chantiry, the current deputy mayor of Ottawa, wins the Liberal nomination in Carleton-Mississippi Mills.
"If he runs against Mr. MacLaren it will be a close race," said Sterling. "It would be very difficult for me to take a position with that kind of scenario coming forward. I might be very quiet about what I'm doing during that election."
Hudak seemed caught off guard by Sterling possibly throwing his support behind a Liberal in the fall election.
"I've talked to Norm and he hasn't brought that up with me," said Hudak. "Norm will decide what Norm does in the secrecy of a ballot box."
Sterling had been a mentor and a friend and no one wanted to see him leave politics by losing the party's nomination, added Hudak.
"This is extraordinarily difficult for Norm and the entire PC family here at Queen's Park to go through," he said. "The fact that he got up there at the nomination meeting to support Jack after he lost, the fact that he's here at the legislature today, I think speaks to the strong character of Norm Sterling."
Sterling was supported at the nomination meeting by Conservative Senator Mike Duffy and federal cabinet minister John Baird, but said the members of the rural landowners' group that wanted to unseat him weren't really Tories, and weren't about to back down.
"Quite frankly, the people who came to support the other candidate, you weren't going to change them on the basis of reason or logic," he said. "I heard from one spectator that some of Mr. MacLaren's supporters didn't even know who John Baird was. That's the way the meeting went."
Still smarting over the loss, Sterling noted he won the riding with healthy majorities almost every time, winning by more than 8,000 votes in 2007, and said polls show he would have won by a bigger margin this fall.
"In a lot of ways it doesn't make sense for the party, but that's the way it is," he said.
Premier Dalton McGuinty mused this week about Sterling's defeat perhaps leading to a split in the Progressive Conservatives, forcing the party further to the right. Sterling said he doesn't think MacLaren and Hillier will be able to do that.
"I think the other members of the caucus will have much greater influence over the direction of the party than those two particular people," said Sterling.
Sterling was looking on the bright side Wednesday, saying being forced out of politics by members of his own party after more than three decades would give him a good ending for his memoirs.
"It's a different way to go out, but one of my colleagues said you should be writing a book, and I said 'Well I've got some great stories to tell,"' said Sterling. "Going out this way is going to make the last chapter very interesting."
