Political guru Nick Kouvalis has split with Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch — but Mayor John Tory Friday morning refused to rule out working with his former campaign strategist again.
“There is no campaign,” Tory said before a Friday-morning news conference. “There is no tie other than to him as a friend. And as a friend I owe it to him to give him a chance to deal with his personal issues.”
Kouvalis made headlines for using the term “cuck” to denigrate a political-science professor in a late-night Twitter debate.
Cuck is an insult used by members of the white nationalist movement to suggest that a man who supports non-white people, or in some cases feminism, is a traitor to the cause.
Tory would not commit to cutting Kouvalis out of future campaigns, but said he did not approve of Kouvalis’ language or the politics that accompany the word.
“He’s apologized for that and I’ve said that it was unacceptable,” said Tory.
“Those are the kinds of things I’m going to have to take into account when it comes time to put a campaign together.
"The real thing that people have to focus on is I’m never going to engage in that kind of thing. I would sooner lose an election than adopt any approach that divides people.”
Kouvalis played a pivotal role in Tory’s 2014 mayoralty campaign, helping him run against, first, the late former mayor Rob Ford, and then Rob’s brother, former city councillor Doug Ford.
Kouvalis was also instrumental in helping Rob Ford win the mayoralty in 2010, and served briefly as his chief of staff through 2011.
Kouvalis is known for fighting hard for his candidates.
Following the 2010 election, he boasted about planting callers into Tory’s radio show on Newstalk 1010 CFRB, to discourage him from running against Rob Ford.
And during the Leitch campaign, he admitted to posting misinformation about Justin Trudeau’s Liberals funding known terrorist groups to — as Maclean's magazine quoted him saying — “make the left go nuts.”
Specifically, the plan was intended to flush out left-leaning Twitter users, to see if any of them had joined the Conservative Party to vote against Leitch — one of the right-leaning leadership hopefuls.
On Thursday, Kouvalis issued a statement removing himself from Leitch’s campaign, saying he had become “a distraction.”
“The campaign should be solely about the candidate and their plans, not their staff’s beliefs, nor their staff’s conduct,” he wrote.
“It has also become clear to me that the pressures that come with a stressful campaign leadership role are not conducive to my personal well-being.”