Belinda Stronach: new face in Conservative politics remains race's enigma

BRUCE CHEADLE
Canadian Press
Saturday, January 17, 2004

OTTAWA (CP) - She is political pugilism's version of the Great Right Hope,
the poster-girl package touted by the backroom boys as the next heavyweight
champ of Canadian conservatism. But whether Belinda Stronach, the
millionaire CEO of Magna International, can dance in the squared circle of
federal politics - or take a punch from her many adversaries - is virtually
impossible to handicap on the eve of her formal entry into the fight for
the leadership of the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Since word leaked two weeks ago she was seriously considering a bid,
followed up last week with word Stronach definitely would run, she has made
but a single, spare public statement. "Citizens are encouraging me to
run," Stronach told a CBC reporter in Detroit during the North
American International Auto Show. "It's something I'm looking at and
considering very seriously."

All interview requests have subsequently been put off until her official
campaign launch, expected Tuesday. Her reluctance to say anything beyond
those carefully measured words was made abundantly clear Friday when she
was reached directly on her cell phone and asked about MP Chuck Strahl's
decision not to run for the leadership. "I'm going to hand you to
someone else," she said quickly, before passing the phone to an aide.

Many of her myriad organizers, among them some of the most experienced
conservative political operatives in the country, have been almost as
difficult to reach. Yet there's been no want of media coverage, despite the
absence of the "air war" typical of most leadership campaigns.
Stories about her political ambitions have been near the top of the news,
including huge front-page photos in several major Ontario dailies on the
same morning last week that fellow Ontarian Tony Clement formally entered
the leadership race.

"You're saying I have a face for radio, is that what you're alleging
here?" Clement, a former Ontario cabinet minister, quipped.
Politically correct letters to the editor have already groused that few
news stories fail to mention Stronach's looks. But apart from the
37-year-old's lofty corporate title (she's president and CEO of her father
Frank Stronach's auto-parts company), multimillion-dollar pay package
(worth $12.5 million in 2003) and elegant appearance, not a great deal else
is known about the twice-divorced mother of two.

Unlike Brian Mulroney, another political outsider who once vaulted to
leadership from the corporate sector, Stronach has not honed her public
speaking skills as a favoured speech-maker at business gatherings. Business
analysts in Toronto are loath to talk on the record about Stronach, and
even in anonymity one would only say "she's an unknown commodity. They
keep her hidden."

Another called Stronach "a bit of an enigma." Magna's
decentralized corporate structure, in which individual manufacturing plants
are largely independently run, makes it difficult to assess Stronach's
managerial contributions, said one market watcher. "It's not a company
where you can easily point to one person and say they've done, this, this,
this and this."

Rick Anderson, a longtime political strategist for the PC, Reform and
Alliance parties, has known Stronach for 10 years and calls her a
"next generation" manager who uses consensus to fuse a wide
variety of advice. "She's got this amazingly interesting ability to
keep sussing out of people parts of this (political process) that are
actually interesting and different and varied and not all of a kind - and
building confidence with people in her," said Anderson, adding he is
not at this point part of her campaign team.

Many political pundits appear happy simply to have some fresh talent on a
political stage that sees rising stars all too seldom. "She will have
initial goodwill capital," said professor Jonathan Rose, a specialist
in political communication at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.
"But that's going to wear off quickly once she's asked to defend
positions and articulate a view of issues which she has hitherto had no
public pronouncements on."

Indeed, Stronach's politics are virtually unknown. Her father once ran for
office as a Liberal, and Magna has contributed corporate funding to a
variety of political parties and individual politicians. Stronach herself
played a brokerage role in getting the Canadian Alliance and Progressive
Conservatives to the negotiating table last summer. Former Ontario premiers
Mike Harris and William Davis are endorsing her leadership bid, and she has
sought advice from Alberta Premier Ralph Klein to Mulroney.

Her lack of electoral experience has already drawn early barbs from her
leadership rivals. Former Alliance leader Stephen Harper, the first
candidate into the race, didn't have to name Stronach directly when he said
the party doesn't have "the luxuries to experiment with
on-the-job-training here." Clement noted "it's easy to look good
when they're throwing the garlands and the rose petals your way," but
he's seen the brickbats flying as a member of an activist provincial
government. "And that's the true test of political leadership."

For Harper and Clement, whether their pasts are ballast or baggage is in
the eye of the beholder, but they do have a political record one can weigh.
Stronach will be tossed into the deep end of a leadership campaign,
sparring with the media, pressing palms on village streets and alone at a
lectern in town halls without the benefit of a political record for backup.

Her learning curve in the dark arts of politicking will be exceptionally
steep. "She's not going to be given six or 18 months to do that. She's
going to be given six hours," said Anderson, the political strategist.
"If she does well in it, she may end up being the chosen leader. If
she doesn't, she may well not be. But I don't think you can tell at this
point whether she'll be good at it or not. This is the part that
everybody's curious about."


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