Sabrina Maddeaux suspends Conservative nomination campaign ...
Maddeaux said that an email containing 'smear attacks' against her was sent to party members
Published May 09, 2024 • Last updated 15 hours ago • 4 minute read
OTTAWA — Political pundit Sabrina Maddeaux has suspended her campaign to become a candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada in the Greater Toronto Area, saying she has lost faith in the election’s integrity, while the party disputes allegations she has made about misconduct in the nomination process.
Maddeaux, who previously wrote columns for National Post announced in January she was running for the Conservative candidacy in the riding of Aurora–Oak Ridges–Richmond Hill. In an interview, she said that she never expected the nomination process to be easy.
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“I know that any sort of political race and nomination races, in particular, can get dirty. There are attacks, there are bumps along the way, but this wasn’t that. I know that even sometimes, the finger can be pressed lightly on the scale in favour of a candidate. Again, this wasn’t that,” she said.
“When rules are being broken, clearly, when voters themselves have concerns about the process that they’re voicing and making complaints, I couldn’t in good conscience continue.”
Maddeaux said that an email containing “smear attacks” against her was sent by “Norman McDaniel” in the riding on April 27 and again on April 29 with an updated membership list which other competitors were not supposed to be able to access.
She said the email was shared with her campaign by members she had recently sold membership cards to and who had never been part of the Conservative Party, so she was confident that their names would not be on any old membership list.
Maddeaux described the email, which the National Post has seen, as “mischaracterizing” quotes from her work early on in her career, claiming she is not a real Conservative and that she would be an “embarrassment” to the riding if elected MP.
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“Sabrina consistently shows a lack of judgement and professionalism needed to represent the Conservative Party. Our community deserves better,” reads the email. “We must not have someone like this as a Candidate who does not share our values and will embarrass us should she make it to Parliament.”
Maddeaux also said no one in her team had ever heard of anyone named “Norman McDaniel,” so her campaign manager contacted the party to share their concerns. She said her team was able to get the party to confirm that no such local member existed.
“This is highly concerning, obviously, that an anonymous person, an anonymous entity had somehow access to an updated membership list that no candidate was supposed to have yet because no candidate had been greenlit at this point in time,” she said.
In an email, Conservative Party spokesperson Sarah Fischer said Maddeaux’s allegations are “completely false” and said the party had received similar complaints about Maddeaux’s campaign using lists it should not have had access to. Maddeaux denied the allegation.
“The Conservative Party received a complaint from her campaign about emails being circulated to members in the riding highlighting things Ms. Maddeaux has written and said in the past,” wrote Fischer.
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“It’s common for the party to receive complaints from nomination candidates about their competitors over suspicions of wrongdoing and the use of lists.”
Maddeaux said that members in the riding complained to her campaign, to the party, sometimes even to Elections Canada and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, to say that they felt that their privacy had been compromised.
Shortly after those emails were sent, she said volunteers from one of her competitors began to show up at the doors of those same members she had recruited, essentially reciting the same attack lines that were contained in the anonymous missive.
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Four other people were vying for the nomination contest in the riding: former Conservative MP Costas Menegakis, Rachel Gilliland, Carmine Perrelli and Yun Liu. Maddeaux would not share whose campaign she suspects was involved in crafting the email.
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Over the past nearly two weeks, she said her campaign submitted all the evidence to the party but said it has not gotten back to her about the next steps or given “any sort of indication that this is actually being taken seriously” despite repeated attempts.
On Thursday morning, Maddeaux posted a video on X announcing her decision to suspend her campaign.
“Living up to my values, why I entered this race to begin with, and my record of standing up for what’s right leaves me no other choice. It comes down to this: I no longer have faith in the integrity of this election,” she said in the video.
Maddeaux said in an interview she does not regret entering politics despite its bitter ending.
“I entered the race for the right reasons,” she said. “Obviously, it didn’t go the way that I expected it to and that’s quite heartbreaking. But I’m still glad I did it because I do believe it’s important to participate in our democracy. And if you want to see change, you should be a part of it on some level.”
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