Eve Adams will seek the Liberal nomination in Eglinton-Lawrence and look to defeat Finance Minister Joe Oliver in the next federal election.
The Mississauga-Brampton South MP made the announcement in a one-on-one interview with CP24 on Wednesday, two days after leaving the Conservative party and crossing the floor to join the Liberals.
Tom Allison, who ran successful election campaigns for Premier Kathleen Wynne and Mayor John Tory, will manage Adams’s campaign.
“I am looking forward to chatting with people one-on-one,” Adams said. “I can tell you that I have received a great deal of local support but it is going to come down to meeting with people, winning them over and ensuring them that in fact I am here to work awfully hard and to advocate for them.”
On Tuesday, Liberal Eglinton-Lawrence MPP Mike Colle told the Canadian Press that it would be “preposterous” for Adams to run in a riding in which she has “no connections and no awareness”
Colle added that if Adams chooses to seek the nomination in Eglinton-Lawrence it would be a “real insult to the local Liberals” in the community.
Speaking with CP24, Adams said that she does have some family in the riding, worked there for a time and plans to purchase a house within its boundaries.
Adams then went on to denounce the so-called “smear campaign” against her.
“What you have seen in the last couple of days doesn’t really surprise me. It is a smear campaign and I think Canadians sort of see through it,” she said, referring largely to critical comments made by members of the Conservative party. “I think they are just embarrassed and hurt. John Baird had just resigned, I then resigned and there were about 20 others not reoffering. There is disillusionment with the leadership there.”
Soudas will help with door knocking
Adams is no stranger to controversy.
In April, while she was involved in a tight-nomination battle in the newly-formed riding of Oakville-North Burlington, riding association president Mark Fedak wrote a letter to the Conservative party complaining that Adams had disrupted a board meeting by verbally abusing members and then refusing to leave. Fedak also alleged that Adams told a consulting firm to refuse to do pre-election consulting work for the riding association board.
Following those complaints, which resulted in a disciplinary letter from the party, Adam’s fiancé Dimitri Soudas was forced out of his job as executive director of the Conservative party for allegedly interfering in the nomination race.
On Tuesday, CTV News confirmed that Soudas would also be working with the Liberals. His time in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office as his director of communications could make him an asset to the Liberal Party.
Asked about what role, if any, that Soudas will play in her campaign on Wednesday Adams said that he will “obviously be helping out with door-knocking” but she refused to discuss his potential involvement, only saying that herself and Soudas are “categorically not” a package deal.
Soudas dropped Adams off at the CP24 studio for the interview and came into the building briefly but then chose to wait outside. He was then seen accompanying Adams as she canvassed in Eglinton-Lawrence later in the morning.
“There are a lot of successful political couples out there and I can’t think of the last time that I heard a man being asked what role his wife played,” Adams told CP24.
Adams could face challenge in nomination fight
Lawyer Marco Mendicino is already campaigning for the Liberal nomination in Eglinton-Lawrence and sources have told the Canadian Press that former cabinet minister Joe Volpe’s son Flavio is considering a run of his own.
Adams, however, told CP24 that Flavio Volpe has informed her that he is not seeking the nomination. Adams then added that she is meeting with Mendicino today.
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