What is Quito Maggi doing in the Ontario Liberal Cold War?
The head of Mainstreet Research has his eye on Scarborough Southwest.
Quito Maggi is the President and CEO of Mainstreet Research, a polling and research firm which he founded in 2010. He is also a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal partisan, well-seasoned in political operations at all three levels of government. This by itself is not a noteworthy thing, and typically people like Quito aren’t the subject of columns.
But in the Ontario Liberal Cold War, Quito has made himself into a story. He falsely claimed that when Nate Erskine-Smith won the nomination to be the Federal Liberal contestant for Beaches—East York over a decade ago, he did so by threatening the permanent residency status of thousands of immigrants.
To be emphatically clear, this is false, and the Deputy Judge at this Ontario Small Claims Court ruled that Quito defamed Nate, that Quito did not take appropriate steps to verify that what he was saying about Nate was true, and that Quito must pay Nate damages of CAD$25,000 plus interest.
Quito, for his part, is asserting his right to appeal to a higher court, which of course he is entitled to. But this continuing legal process, especially at its current standpoint, makes his further activity in the Ontario Liberal Cold War questionable.
According to reporting from Ahmad Elbayoumi at Policorner, Quito is assisting Rob Cerjanec, the Liberal MPP for Ajax, in the latter’s bid for the Ontario Liberal leadership. To be blunt, I do not see how this arrangement is tenable for Rob, when Quito has been found by Ontario’s court system to have defamed one of Rob’s main opponents in the leadership contest.
And it certainly must be a conflict of interest for Quito’s firm Mainstreet to continue polling races that involve Nate Erskine-Smith. When polling for a provincial by-election in Scarborough Southwest, where Nate and previous candidate Qadira Jackson are both pursuing the Ontario Liberal nomination, Quito showed results claiming that Qadira would win the riding in the general, but Nate would lose.
There are no methodological concerns I have with this poll; my concern is with conducting it in the first place. You cannot lose a defamation lawsuit against a guy, then go work for the political opponent of that same guy, and then release polls about the guy! All three of these things create conflicts for each other!
And in terms of polling accuracy, I would like to see other firms conduct polls in Scarborough Southwest as well, and see what results they get in comparison to Mainstreet’s numbers. It’s always healthy to have several polling firms conduct their own analysis independent of each other.
But wait, because the Quito story gets more complicated. Yesterday, a random phone number texted a variety of Ontario Liberals, soliciting the following:
Friends, I’m running as the local voice in Scarborough Southwest for the OLP nomination. Help me send Nate back home to the Beach, donate here - Qadira
[STRIPE DONATION LINK]
Reply STOP to opt out
When visiting that link, test donations reveal that the money flows to a Stripe business account, listing the contact info as QadiraJackson.ca, which is her official campaign website, and a phone number with her recording on the voicemail system. This phone number is different, however, than the one listed on her campaign website.
For her part, Qadira has issued a public statement firmly denying that she sent or authorized this text message, and that she does not agree with the hostile tone towards Nate. Nonetheless, if not her, the question is clear: who did send it?
What we know is that the phone numbers from which this text was received are rented out to various people. The header image demonstrates that a year prior to this text, Quito’s Mainstreet Research rented it for their own polling. Others have received contact from the same number for Liberal campaigns, including Chrystia Freeland’s Federal Liberal leadership run.
While Quito has issued a statement to Policorner claiming that Mainstreet does not own the number and last rented it a year ago, it appears that the number is rented out by Bellwether Technologies, who advertise themselves on their LinkedIn page as “a preferred vendor of the Liberal Party of Canada for direct voter contact” and, most importantly, were founded as part of Mainstreet in 2010.
It is unclear what formal links remain between Mainstreet and Bellwether other than the former contracting telephone contact services from the latter. Bellwether involves Ferd Longo, who is also part of Rob Cerjanec’s leadership campaign according to the same Policorner piece that reported Quito’s involvement.
All together, though, Bellwether should have the capacity to tell the Ontario Liberals who rented this number from them, and how they got the contact information of Ontario Liberal members. Whether or not Qadira Jackson’s team did actually send out this text, the Stripe link as provided is completely non-compliant with Elections Ontario fundraising rules, and the Ontario Liberal Party needs to identify who is responsible, and who is collecting the money.
Finally, as for Quito Maggi? His messy involvement with Scarborough Southwest and the Ontario Liberal Cold War needs to be cleaned up, because there are several conflicts here that are intolerable. And if he will not rectify this of his own volition, the party must step in and draw a line.