Inside look at Fletcher’s political comeback

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/04/2016 (3462 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The job of journalists often comes with rare access that offers almost as rare opportunity.

Including a look behind the scenes of partisan politics, where they can get to know the players more as people than posturing politicians. Of course there are some politicians they admire personally more than others, no matter what the political stripe. Steven Fletcher and Dave Chomiak are two at the top of my list, and when one won and the other lost in last week’s provincial election, I felt compelled to call both of them. I left a consoling voice-mail message for Chomiak, the veteran NDP cabinet minister. And Sunday night I phoned Fletcher to congratulate the former Harper cabinet minister and right-to-die advocate who made a political comeback from his defeat in last fall’s federal election and won a seat as a Progressive Conservative MLA in Assiniboia.

Maybe it was the late hour, but I sensed Fletcher was surprised to hear from me, which he shouldn’t have been given the post-election column I wrote last fall suggesting the then-42-year-old had more to give in public life and perhaps he should be nominated and appointed to the Senate. Given my political views compared with Fletcher’s — he’s a self-described compassionate, small-c conservative with a libertarian lean — he may have been surprised by what was basically an endorsement of Steven the person. But Sunday night over the phone, Fletcher had some surprises for me, including when I asked if he had received congratulatory messages from anyone in his political past.

“I did,” he said. “And it wasn’t anyone who you would think.”

The congrats came from federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May.

“She was really sweet.”

He went on to share just how devastated — my word not his — he was after being rejected in the federal election. It was, I told him, not a rejection of him personally, but of then-prime minister Stephen Harper. Just as Chomiak’s defeat wasn’t a repudiation of him, but of Premier Greg Selinger.

It was early on in our conversation when Fletcher referred to how much the column I wrote about him last fall helped him — gave him a lift — when he was feeling so down after being rejected in the federal election.

“I really appreciated that article,” he said.

Fletcher went on to say that wasn’t the first time he had felt the positive power of a Free Press story at a critical juncture in his life. The first time was the story reporter Bill Redekop wrote in 1996, about the collision with a moose that resulted in Fletcher being paralyzed from the neck down. He was only 23. Fletcher recalled being in intensive care, unable to speak, with Redekop’s sensitively written newspaper story by his bed, and the nurses all reading it as they came on shift. Redekop, who was an avid canoeist, had known Fletcher before the accident as “a legend” among Manitoba paddlers . And Fletcher has told Redekop, as he told me, he believes the story helped humanize the mute and motionless young man they were tasked with caring for.

“I wasn’t just a number.”

Again, later, it was another Redekop story — about Fletcher running for president of the University of Manitoba Students’ Union — he credits with helping him win and launch his path to purpose as a politician. And that’s what he went on to do federally for more than 11 years. Still, his decision to run provincially was far from a certainty. He consulted a friend he said he doesn’t always agree with — interim federal Conservative leader Rona Ambrose.

“And her advice was, ‘Steven, the best thing you could do for Conservatives now in Canada is to help Brian Pallister win a Conservative government.’”

Eventually, our chat turned to other politicians, past and present, whom Fletcher admires as people. One was the socialist, Sidney Green, who represented him pro bono and on principle during a lengthy court case involving Manitoba Public Insurance.

“He is an example of a model human being. If I could be half the MLA or citizen that he has been I’ll consider myself a success.”

Then there is MP Rob Oliphant, the chair of the joint parliamentary committee on the assisted-dying bill in front of whom Fletcher testified. Later, he heard from Oliphant.

“He wrote me one of the nicest cards, in the most beautiful handwriting, I will keep forever.” And, Fletcher added with emphasis, “he’s a Liberal.”

Fletcher went on to describe him another way.

“He’s a great guy. Like, if I was in his riding, I would have to move out.”

That’s how I feel about Steven Fletcher too, with one difference.

I think he’s a great guy. And, if I could have, I would have moved into his riding.

Just to support him.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca