A scrapped BC Conservative candidate who claims he was bullied out of the party has fired back at critics with a not-so-subtle visual metaphor featuring – you guessed it – a live bull.
In a YouTube rant released Sunday, Mischa Popoff lobs bombs at Conservative Leader John Cummins as a bull nudges his backside for almost four full minutes.
“The bullying has got to stop,” Popoff says. “Who got to you, John? What kind of leader are you?”
Cummins dumped Popoff last week over comments he made to a newspaper criticizing single moms for having children “without a man by their side,” and calling the Missing Women’s Inquiry a “waste of time.”
“If John Cummins wants to pretend that I’m insensitive of women just because I said we should discourage single motherhood and encourage kids to be raised in families, well he’s got another thing coming,” Popoff responds in the video.
He also addresses his comments about the inquiry, pointing out that the process did not result in any punishments or penalties for those involved in police failures.
“Forty-nine women go missing and turn up dead and the inquiry doesn’t fire a single cop, or cut their pay, or reprimand them in any way, shape or form,” he says.
The indignant former Conservative then insists his firing was a strategic error, arguing the Boundary-Similkameen riding was the party’s best and only chance to pick up a seat in the upcoming election.
“You really want to take all of those votes and just hand them to the Liberals?” he asks. “Shame on you, John. But look, no hard feelings because we’re going to find out on May 14th exactly how this is going to play out.”
Popoff is still in the race as an independent.
Another three Conservative candidates were sidelined last week, beginning on Monday with Jeff Sprague in North Vancouver-Lonsdale. Sprague stepped down over what he called an “unfortunate personal incident.”
On Wednesday, Vancouver-False Creek candidate Ian Tootill was fired for a Twitter message he wrote in 2012 asking, “Who’s really to blame? Hitler or the people who acted on his words?”
Vancouver-West End candidate Ron Herbert was let go on Sunday. Though the party didn’t reveal the reasons, Herbert reportedly had called Premier Christy Clark a “bitch” on his private Twitter account.