Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown raises his hands in victory with Christine Elliott in Toronto on Saturday, May 9, 2015. The two candidates’ teams worked to keep the party united throughout the campaign.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Just after Progressive Conservative MPP Monte McNaughton pressed send on his incendiary missive mocking leadership hopeful Christine Elliott, Patrick Brown's campaign chair, Walied Soliman, picked up the phone and called his counterpart in the Elliott camp.
This was not the first time Mr. Soliman and John Capobianco, the co-chair of the Elliott campaign, had quietly spoken during the nearly year-long campaign for the Ontario PC leadership.
"There were at least four or five times during the campaign where there were very friendly discussions on how to lower the temperature, how to deal with issues," said Mr. Soliman, a Bay Street lawyer and long-time friend of Mr. Brown. "There were always discussions happening in order to ensure we came out of this united."
Like other political contests, this one was tense and at times very heated. Mr. Brown, 36, the newly minted PC Leader, won with 62 per cent of the electoral votes – but he had only five of the 28 Tory MPPs supporting him. The rest were with Ms. Elliott.
"Right now, my first priority has been to be here at Queen's Park to speak to caucus … to make sure that we are all focused and united in the same direction," Mr. Brown told reporters Monday, his first day on the job.
Nonetheless, he said he's not concerned that the PC education critic Garfield Dunlop supports the Liberal's sex-education curriculum – and he doesn't. "That's not a significant issue for me," he said.
Mr. Brown has been the Conservative MP for Barrie since 2006. But he will be making his farewell speech on Wednesday in the House of Commons and resign his seat. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, he will collect a pension of $44,537 starting at age 55.
Now, he needs to win a seat in the legislature. He has received offers from some PC MPPs, who have said they will step down, but neither he nor his campaign team will say where he might run. Nor will he say if the party will be paying him a salary, as he will have no income once he leaves the House of Commons.
"I'm not worried about that at this point," he told reporters.
Ms. Elliott was not in the legislature Monday and is taking time off and "reflecting on the campaign and what she wants to do moving forward," Mr. Capobianco said.
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Mr. Capobianco said he and Mr. Soliman were striving to keep the insults and accusations from spiralling out of control for the "sake of the party."
"Walied and I both came from the PC youth," said Mr. Capobianco, a consultant. "But we would see what happens when you have these family feuds and the aftermath when things get so acrimonious."
For example, he recalled the "infamous" Larry Grossman and Dennis Timbrell leadership battles of the 1980s. "For years, both campaigns wouldn't talk to each other and [people] would be identified as being from one camp or the other."
In 1985, the PC Party held two leadership conventions Mr. Grossman and Mr. Timbrell ran unsuccessfully in January 1985 to replace Bill Davis. Frank Miller won but did poorly in the election and resigned. The two ran again in November, and Mr. Grossman won by a very slim margin.
On Saturday night, Mr. Soliman asked supporters at Mr. Brown's victory party to "hug a Christine Elliott person."
"Every single time either her campaign or our campaign took steps that were going to potentially cause rifts, there were immediate discussions at the highest levels between both campaigns," he said.
And so, Mr. Soliman picked up the phone to call Mr. Capobianco after Mr. McNaughton's e-mail to party members in which he referred to Ms. Elliott as "Christine Elliott Trudeau" and said Mr. Brown was the only one who would stand up to the Liberal's new sex-education curriculum.
He joked about her promise to attract new members to the party and build a "big blue tent," saying she should rename her tent the "Little Pink Tent." Ms. Elliott's supporters criticized the message as nasty and possibly homophobic.
Said Mr. Capobianco: "Yes, that was one we had discussed."
The Elliott campaign pulled no punches, either. Ms. Elliott sent out a pointed statement when Mr. McNaughton dropped out of the leadership contest to support Mr. Brown.
"Patrick and Monte's ideological rejection of a modern and inclusive Ontario will do nothing more than lose the next election and secure another term for Kathleen Wynne and her Liberals," she said.
"The day that press release came out," said Mr. Soliman, "it was certainly upsetting but I can absolutely tell you that's completely and totally and unequivocally forgotten. Not only forgotten … Patrick doesn't even remember it."