Tom Long
|
|
Tom Long (born 1959) is a Canadian political strategist. Long was president of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party in the late 1980s and played a key role in writing and implementing Mike Harris' Common Sense Revolution as well as helping the Tories win the 1995 Ontario election that brought them to power.
In 2000 Long ran for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance in an attempt to make the new party more Ontario friendly and bring Progressive Conservatives into the party. He came in third in a campaign that was stung by allegations of fraudulent registration of non-existent members -- allegedly including a number of deceased individuals and a few dogs -- in Quebec. After dropping from the first ballot, he supported Preston Manning on the second; after Manning's defeat by Stockwell Day, Long returned to behind-the-scenes activism.
In the 2004 Conservative Party of Canada leadership race, Long supported former Ontario PC cabinet minister Tony Clement for the leadership of the merged federal PC and Alliance parties.
Also in 2004, Long returned to the headlines as a result of criticism of consulting contracts awarded by Ontario public agencies to backroom figures what was by then the former PC government. He was associated with a head-hunting firm and an energy consulting company that received $1.3 million in contracts from Hydro One, Ontario's publicly-owned electric distribution system.