Vic Fedeli says he won’t run for the party leadership

The Ontario PC’s interim leader told reporters Tuesday that he won’t be looking for a permanent leadership role. Vic Fedeli says that he’s seen enough ‘rot’ within the party and that he needs to focus on cleaning that up instead of worrying about the party’s leadership election in March, let alone the provincial election in June.

In a span of five days, PC finance critic Vic Fedeli went from a long-term party leader candidate, to being elected as the interim leader the next day, to removing any chance of running for party leadership today.

“I will work exclusively as interim leader that means there will be no room for a leadership bid from me.”

Fedeli told reporters that since taking the temporary leadership role, he’s discovered what he called ‘rot’ within the PC’s. While Fedeli is referring to issues including the party’s cyber security and membership lists, the PC’s are still reeling after their former leader Patrick Brown and President Rick Dykstra resigned just days apart as they both face allegations of sexual misconduct. With the June 7th provincial election looming, the PC’s have an optics problem.

“Certainly an image of a party that’s a bit of a dumpster fire is not the image you want to show as a government in waiting. It may be more of a professional wrestling federation in waiting at the moment, they’ll have to work on that image.” Peter Graefe, political scientist McMaster University.

But Fedeli sees it as being transparent to voters. “We don’t have anything to hide, we acknowledge we have issues and we’re going to bring them forward we’re going to clean them up.”

Fedeli doesn’t have much time. The PC leadership election is planned for March 24th and Peter Graefe says that whoever they elect may have a different plan for the party than Patrick Brown did.