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OTTAWA – Nick Kouvalis, the political mastermind behind Conservative MP Kellie Leitch’s leadership bid, is defending her campaign’s tactics, proposed values test for newcomers and all-out assault on rival candidates.

But Kouvalis, the Ontario MP’s campaign manager and a master of wedge politics, says she’s the boss and he isn’t pulling the strings behind the scenes.

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“My job is very simple. It’s to build a campaign around what a candidate wants to run on,” the 41-year-old said in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen.

“This is her campaign. This is what she stands for. And I know people want to say, ‘That’s Nick doing this and Nick doing that.’ Everybody in this campaign has a campaign manager. Everybody does. I don’t know what the other campaign managers are doing, but I know what I’m doing, I’m helping Kellie win – and she’s winning.”

The seasoned pollster and guru behind the successful mayoral campaigns of John Tory and Rob Ford usually likes to keep out of the spotlight.