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OTTAWA — A former long-shot candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party will be running for the Conservative Party in this year’s federal election.

David Bertschi won the Conservative nomination for Orleans on Tuesday evening, according to a spokesman for the party.

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An Ottawa trial lawyer who had run and lost as the federal Liberal candidate for Orleans in the 2011 election, Bertschi withdrew his candidacy for leadership a month before Justin Trudeau’s leadership contest victory in April 2013. He tried to run for the Liberals in the same riding in the 2015 election, but in what Postmedia reported at the time was a “chaotic and divisive” nomination event, he lost out to retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie.

Bertschi, who’d initially been approved to run as a candidate but was disbarred by Liberal national campaign chairs a month before the nomination meeting, with Trudeau’s approval, showed up with “some angry supporters” complaining the party had undemocratically disqualified him, Postmedia reported. Enough of a scuffle broke out that police were called to the scene. Liberal officials cited Bertschi’s failure to pay off debts from his 2013 leadership bid.