If Maxime Bernier becomes the next leader of the Conservative party, expect Emrys Graefe to become the next Jenni Byrne.

“I kind of feel, in a way … like I’m the new Jenni. Not that I’m the same person as Jenni at all … we’re totally different humans,” said Graefe, referring to the powerful and divisive Harper-era party operative. “But I’m kind of like the new Jenni. The guy who people like to say bad things about.”

Graefe is the 34-year-old strategist who’s penned many of the emails Bernier’s campaign has sent to supporters. He’s been a key advisor on the campaign, wearing many hats.

Graefe’s comments about O’Leary’s staff, published Friday, raised eyebrows at the Toronto convention, where candidates expressed concern about party unity in their final speeches. Bernier has little support in caucus, and few supporters among the staffers in the party office.

Graefe has been behind Bernier’s toughest attacks on rival candidates.

Remember when Bernier called Kevin O’Leary a “loser”? Graefe said he wrote the email. “I felt a little bit awkward when I went to [Kevin O’Leary’s] office afterward,” he said.

“If Maxime Bernier wins, it’s because of Emrys Graefe,” a senior member of a rival campaign said late Friday night at a hospitality suite.

Graefe, Bernier’s deputy campaign manager, also has been working part-time for Conservative member of Parliament Alex Nuttall. Recently, Nuttall called Graefe the “greatest Conservative strategist of our generation” in a conversation with iPolitics.

Graefe laughs and shrugs off the praise. “That sounds like something (Nuttall would) say.” He started working for the MP for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte shortly after the 2015 election, during which he had been working in the party war room. He said he and Nuttall quickly became the perfect match.

Graefe describes his childhood and education as one long struggle with authority: growing up poor in Ottawa surrounded by the sons and daughters of Rockcliffe, dropping out of school, being suspended from school, being accepted as a mature student at Carleton University to study political science.

He interned with the Conservative party in 2009 and was offered a spot in Stephen Harper’s PMO, but had to decline because he had another semester left at Carleton. But the offer itself got him thinking.

“I had never really been involved in politics and I went from the dirt poor kind of drug abusing kid to suddenly like … a job in the prime minister’s office – in Stephen Harper’s prime minister’s office. That’s super weird so I just stuck around and I always enjoyed campaigning.”

He acknowledged that, though his parents think it’s cool he’s involved in politics, he can’t exactly ask them for help.

“I don’t have a family to fall on … I can’t ask my Dad. My Dad currently works three nights a week overnight shift stocking shelves in the Arnprior Metro and he lives in a cabin that he built out of garbage in the woods …” said Graefe, “I can’t ask my dad, ‘Hey man, what’s the secret to being successful in life?'”

Graefe’s first real Hill job was working for MP Kelly Block, then for John Williamson, a friend of Byrne. Graefe said he soon found himself back at CPC headquarters and Byrne took notice of his work. Graefe said he was the deputy director for the Conservative party’s 2015 campaign.

That’s where Graefe wants to land when the leadership campaign is over — CPC headquarters.

“What I care about most is the party being in a good position for 2019. I have no interest in working in the Opposition leader’s office,” he said, adding Nuttall knows he wants to move on soon.

“If I’m going to be an employee again I’m going to work at party HQ and the exact role, I don’t really know or particularly care.”

Graefe said he would prefer to work at the CPC headquarters over the OLO because he doesn’t “want to wear a suit and feel fancy and self important … I want to wear a T-shirt and shorts and win a campaign.”

Graefe said Bernier’s team won’t “fire everyone” at CPC HQ if he wins tonight, because Bernier only began his campaign with five people and the party still needs more staff, especially in communications.

So far, only Maxime Hupe and Kory Teneycke have been doing communications work for Bernier; Graefe said they likely won’t be able to “get” Teneycke but he expects he will continue to play a role if Bernier wins. Graefe called the former Harper PMO comms director “our adult in the room.”

Graefe admitted he’s not totally fixated on what happens in Parliament — but he does want to see Bernier’s platform implemented and insists that the plan is to make it the CPC’s platform in 2019.

And if members should disagree with it? “They won’t.”

What about issues like supply management? “They don’t disagree at all.”

“There are some silly old fuddy-duddies,” Graefe said, “who believe they have a clue about things out in the real world and they don’t, and I include Andrew Scheer in that because he’s the oldest 38-year-old I have ever known.”

“(Scheer) is the most establishment human being that could possibly be,” he said, adding that he thinks Scheer’s tried to copy ever Bernier policy he thinks he can lift without “causing any waves.”

More than once during the interview, Graefe described himself as “irreverent”, suggested that people hate him and said that a lot of negative campaign tactics have been falsely attributed to him during the campaign. Someone, for example, purchased a false website domain for Lisa Raitt which redirected users to an Andrew Scheer website. Graefe said Scheer’s campaign started a whisper campaign that he was the one behind it. He insists he wasn’t.

“[Scheer’s camp] are the ones talking about unity as a problem and I’m pretty sure it’s because they don’t intend to play nicely with us when we win, so it will be interesting, very interesting,” he said. Graefe told iPolitics in the same interview that he would feel more comfortable hiring staff from O’Leary’s camp than Scheer’s.

But Graefe insisted that Bernier doesn’t plan on coming into office right away and “switching all of the cabinet roles, and burning and pillaging.”

Graefe also said we can expect Bernier to be very candid with the media. “He’s going to be honest.”