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Flush with cash, Conservatives plan to roll out more ads touting Poilievre

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The chair of the federal Conservative Party’s powerful fundraising arm said Friday the Tories are flush with cash and they’ll spend more money than previously planned to roll out additional ads touting leader Pierre Poilievre.

As part of Poilievre’s summer rebrand, the party has deployed a multimillion-dollar ad campaign that depicts the leader as a family man.

One is narrated by his wife, Ana Poilievre, and features the leader at home with their daughter, Valentina.

In another ad, Poilievre softly recites his key message.

“Everything seems broken in Canada. Unaffordable. Unsafe. Divided. But we can put the pieces back together,” he says while playing with a puzzle.

 

Conservatives reintroduce Pierre Poilievre with $3M ad campaign

 

The Conservative Party of Canada is reintroducing leader Pierre Poilievre to Canadians with a $3 million ad campaign that some insiders say is a move to rebrand him with a softer image.

Long known for attack-dog-style in Parliament, the ads are part of a deliberate effort to soften his image and make him more appealing to swing voters in key ridings.

The ads have shown up on TV — including during highly rated late-summer Toronto Blue Jays games — radio, digital platforms and in print media.

‘More ads ready to go’

Based on their apparent success so far, Rob Staley, the Conservative Fund chair and former prime minister Stephen Harper’s ex-lawyer, said the party will use its surplus to roll out similar ads in the coming months.

“The campaign has been and continues to be successful. We have more ads ready to go,” Staley said in an early morning address to delegates assembled in Quebec City for the party’s policy convention.

“We have a lot more to tell Canadians about the failures of the Trudeau government and we’re going to do just that,” he said.

“We’re going to spend more than budgeted on advertising and going on tour.”

The party is determined to get an edge up on the governing Liberals and spend more than they do before the next election, Staley said.

The Conservative Party retired all 2021 election-related loans last year and all the cash pouring in now is earmarked for the fund’s “principal objective” — defeating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his party in the next campaign, he said.

Looking for more from donors

The party has already set aside money for the next election and it plans to spend the maximum amount it can under the Elections Canada spending cap of roughly $30 million, Staley said.

The fund chair wouldn’t say just how much is in the party’s election bank account but he added that the party plans to take on as little debt as possible.

To accomplish that, Staley said the party will be asking donors to dig a little deeper and send more cash to party headquarters.

What’s up with Pierre Poilievre’s new look?

 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has ditched the glasses and started wearing more casual clothes in a bid to widen his appeal to voters.

The party has set non-election year fundraising records in the first and second quarters of 2023, with more than $16 million collected, easily outpacing the Liberals — and Staley’s determined to keep up the momentum.

“I make no apologies for the calls, emails and texts we send — I know people don’t always like to get them — because they’re critical to achieving the goal that we all share. We will not be reluctant to ask for more,” Staley said.

“We are a year into Pierre’s leadership this week and we have accomplished so much but much more needs to be done.”

That includes more stops on Poilievre’s cross-country tour. Poilievre’s jam-packed summer schedule was designed to highlight the government’s perceived failures on inflation, affordability and housing.

Poilievre will address convention delegates in a prime-time address Friday night. Observers say it’s the most important speech of his leadership so far.

 

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Quebec party supports member who accused fellow politicians of denigrating minorities

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MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.

Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.

Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.

Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.

Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.

Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Virginia Democrats advance efforts to protect abortion, voting rights, marriage equality

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.

The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.

“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”

The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.

“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”

The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.

“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.

Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.

Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.

It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.

“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”

A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.

If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.

The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.

As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.

Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.

“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.

The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.

___

Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

___

Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.

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Trump chooses anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary

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NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.

“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.

He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.

The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.

A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.

With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”

It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.

Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.

He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.

HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

__ Seitz reported from Washington.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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