It appears that Jim Coutts, a powerful Liberal Party strategist in his day, may be looking to get back into the game. Coutts has pledged his support to Kennedy as a delegate and donated $1000 to his campaign, but he has long-standing ties to Bob Rae and donated $4400 to his leadership campaign. Is it possible that Coutts is looking to use his position to broker a deal between Rae and Kennedy in Rae’s favour?
Jason Cherniak brought my attention to these rumours in his post earlier today in which he declares that it’s all a conspiracy theory with no substance. Perhaps, but the explanation provided to him from the Kennedy camp doesn’t seem to hold up very well. Apparently Coutts–who knows Liberal Party politics as well or better than anyone else in the country–couldn’t make up his mind who to support “all summer” but decided to give $4400 to Bob Rae on June 16th before finally having an epiphany and deciding to give his remaining $1000 donation limit to Kennedy and join his team on June 30th, a mere two weeks later.
It’s possible that either Bob Rae did something unforgivable during that two week period to push Coutts out of his camp or that Kennedy’s star suddenly shone extra bright, but besides both candidates picking up a handful of endorsements during that time little of significance publicly happened.
The post from Steve Janke that Cherniak links to actually doesn’t seem all that improbable, although I can’t verify if Coutts is as close to Rae as the post claims. It certainly got me thinking.
I don’t want to conspiracy monger, but what’s more probable:
1) A once powerful Liberal Party strategist with some significant ties to Bob Rae can’t decide who to support for leader, so he gives almost his entire donation limit to Rae’s campaign before suddenly deciding that he actually supports Kennedy’s campaign?
2) A once powerful Liberal Party strategist with some significant ties to Bob Rae decides to take advantage of one of the last times his influence will matter and donates a significant amount of money to Rae’s campaign before using his remaining $1000 and declaring his support to Kennedy to ingratiate himself with the Kennedy campaign so that he can be in a position on the convention floor to gain close access to Kennedy?
Number two hardly seems beyond the pale. Keep in mind that during Coutts’ height, there weren’t thousands of people downloading lists of campaign donors at the click of a button to pour over and analyze. If he wanted to play both sides, it’s likely he never considered that people would find out he’d donated to both campaigns until long after the leadership campaign was over.
