Source: Toronto Star (Canada) Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Pubdate: Friday, July 17, 1998 Page: A6 Author: William Walker TORY RACE TAKES A U-TURN Pot-smoking preacher joins list of leadership hopefuls OTTAWA - Is Canada's oldest political party being ridiculed? One candidate for the Progressive Conservative party leadership is a pot-smoking preacher, another a self-described eccentric. Another, 59-year-old former prime minister Joe Clark, is launching his improbable comeback from an office next door to a Viagra clinic. Some of the other 15 candidates are so bizarre and obscure nobody knows who they are. One candidate, radio jingle writer and inventor Scot Paterson of Ottawa, looked out at his empty news conference and said: ``I just hope you people in the audience keep your questions short.'' By July 31 it's put-up or shut-up time. The far-out 15 each must submit a $30,000 deposit or be candidates no more. Some senior Tories say the party is being made a mockery because it allowed the contest to be so wide open between the time Jean Charest departed for the Quebec Liberal leadership and July 31. ``These guys think they're entitled to their 15 minutes of fame. So what?'' remarked veteran Tory organizer Tim Ralfe. ``If you want an open democratic process, you open yourself up to that.'' To others, it's a sign of how far the once-proud Tory party has fallen - to fifth place in the House of Commons and on the bubble of relevancy. Rev. Brother Michael Baldasaro, 49, of the Church of the Universe, lives in a trailer with no electricity next door to PCBs stored on an abandoned Cambridge steel mill site. He held a news conference yesterday to declare his candidacy. Baldasaro, looking like a rock group ZZ Top reject, explained that he's on a long-term disability pension after ``my head was run over by a front-end loader. I'm a little slow, okay?'' But before he held the news conference, he smoked a joint. He considers marijuana a healing ``tree of life'' and smokes it every day ``if I can.'' The former steel mill was given to him as church headquarters by fellow Tory leadership candidate John Long, a businessman who says the media are ``running scared'' from the current ``global depression'' because reporters are afraid of the banks. ``He (Long) gave the church sanctuary and for that I thank him,'' Baldasaro told reporters. ``He is wonderful. He encouraged me to run.'' Beyond bizarre, some candidates who've declared thus far just seem to be AWOL. The Star could not track down candidates Frank Abbass of Toronto, David C. Allen of Brantford, Michael Hewton of Cambridge or Tim Wright of North Bay. Even those with some credibility are being scoffed at. Clark and fellow candidate Hugh Segal, once chief of staff to former prime minister Brian Mulroney, are jokingly referred to in Ottawa as ``yesterday's man and yesterday's man-servant.'' Ralfe said all that's important is that after July 31 (the actual one-member, one-vote contest is slated for Oct. 24) the $30,000 deposit will guarantee that only real candidates remain. Jan Dymond, co-chairperson of the Tory leadership selection committee, said the party had no choice but to attach the $30,000 deposit to a formal deadline for candidates. But now Baldasaro has filed papers and intends to challenge the deposit in court on the basis of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. - --- Checked-by: Mike Gogulski