Posted at Sunday, November 16, 2008  EDT  

Bob Rae leaves a Liberal leadership town hall meeting in Mississauga, Ont. on Sunday, after objecting to the 'closed door' format of the meeting. The meeting, hosted by the Liberal Party, gave the opportunity for leadership contenders to speak to members of the party, including presidents of the Riding Associations.

Dropping gloves early, Rae walks out on forum

CAMPBELL CLARK AND COLIN FREEZE,  From Monday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA AND MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — Bob Rae moved to check the early lead of Liberal leadership rival Michael Ignatieff by accusing him of preparing a “peekaboo” campaign, and refusing to allow a session with candidates to be held in public.

The weekend brouhaha at a meeting of Liberals from Ontario made it clear that Mr. Ignatieff is viewed as the leading contender, and that Mr. Rae's first goal is to ensure his opponent does not quietly coast through the race.

On Sunday, Mr. Rae boycotted a leadership “forum” where candidates were to take questions from riding presidents and other party officials, after Mr. Ignatieff refused calls from his two rivals to open the session to reporters and cameras.

Mr. Rae accused Mr. Ignatieff of preparing a “peekaboo” campaign.

“There is a fray: It's called a leadership race. And you can't very well stay above it. If you want to stay above it, you're not going to be in it,” Mr. Rae said outside the meeting at a Mississauga hotel.

“The Liberal Party is a political party. It's not a private club.”

The squabble over the Mississauga leadership forum was the first real exchange of jabs between leadership contenders since Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion announced he would step down last month after his party's Oct. 14 election defeat.

Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Rae, former university roommates who nursed a sharp rivalry throughout the 2006 leadership campaign, have both pledged to run this campaign with a civil tone.

Party officials had planned the weekend session as a chance for federal Liberal Party officials from Ontario to see the leadership candidates close up. Mr. Rae's campaign and that of New Brunswick MP Dominic LeBlanc asked for it to be opened to news media, but Mr. Ignatieff's campaign objected.

Mr. Ignatieff insisted Sunday that it was the party's Ontario wing, and not him, that set the rules two weeks ago, and dismissed the controversy as a “tempest in a teacup.”

“Sometimes in any party's life there's time for a family gathering and time for a public gathering. Today it's family. It was agreed a couple of weeks ago …,” he said. “Today's the day riding presidents get to tell us the unvarnished truth.”

Mr. LeBlanc said the episode showed that old Liberal habits of internal bickering die hard, dismissing the episode as a childish squabble. “The so-called candidates of experience should show some more maturity,” he said.

But the jousting underlined the dynamics of a race with a small field of contestants – a battle that is shaping up as very different from the 2006 race, when 11 candidates ran, and eight appeared on the convention ballot, dividing support in a brokered party gathering.

With only three candidates lining up to contest the Liberal leadership this time, there is speculation that Mr. Ignatieff may be building enough support to win more than half the delegates and lock up a first-ballot victory even before the convention.

Four key supporters of the past convention's fourth-place finisher Gerard Kennedy – MPs Mark Holland, Navdeep Bains, Mario Silva and defeated MP Omar Alghabra – moved to join Mr. Ignatieff's team over the weekend.

Mr. Ignatieff's Achilles heel in the 2006 race was a series of gaffes, like his suggestion that Israel committed war crimes in that year's Lebanon war, that led some in the party to question whether the then-rookie politician was ready to lead. He was the front-runner then, but his support stalled, and he was overtaken by Mr. Dion at the convention.

Mr. Rae's salvo this weekend appeared aimed at making it more difficult for Mr. Ignatieff to run the type of head-down, low-profile campaign sometimes favoured by front-runners, which reduce the risk of missteps and gaffes.

The former Ontario premier called for a string of weekly Liberal leadership debates every Thursday, except during holiday breaks, that would see the candidates square off a total of 13 times before next May's convention. “We need to open up the party. We need to open up the debate,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Ignatieff insisted that he doesn't see himself as the front-runner, and that he will not hide from the media, or public debate. Supporters like MP John McCallum warned that the Conservatives would use the Liberal infighting against them.

Mr. LeBlanc, the candidate positioning himself as the alternative to the Ignatieff-Rae grudge match, chastised both of his rivals for petty bickering.

“I think Michael was mistaken to want to keep the press out, but I also think Bob was mistaken to take his marbles and go home,” he said. “For two people who claimed that they wanted to bring civility to the leadership race, it's not off to a very good start when they're at each other's throats at the first event.”