Conservatives name former Rebel Media director as 2019 campaign chair
Man who helped Andrew Scheer win party leadership set to run Tory federal election campaign
Hamish Marshall is by all accounts bright and experienced. He has helped Andrew Scheer and the Conservative Party win before. But the man the federal Conservatives have hired to run their next election campaign comes with baggage that Scheer himself now wants to avoid — a connection to media outlet The Rebel.
If most Canadians know Marshall's name at all, it's probably because of that Rebel link. Like most campaign managers, the bespectacled and baby-faced Marshall stayed behind the scenes during Scheer's leadership race.
But in August, as growing controversy swirled around The Rebel's coverage of neo-Nazis and white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., Scheer began to face questions about Marshall's role as a director of Rebel Media Ltd. and Scheer's own willingness to grant interviews to the outlet.
"So as long as the editorial direction of that particular institution remains as it is … I won't be granting those types of interviews," Scheer told reporters in mid-August, insisting that he wanted to focus on providing a positive vision that would bring Canadians together.
And it's precisely that tension that could prove a challenge for Scheer. Marshall helped him run a positivity-themed campaign during the leadership, focusing largely on party unity. Scheer's opponents, though, will undoubtedly point to Marshall's past in an attempt to link Scheer to the anger expressed by the so-called alt-right.
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