COLLINGWOOD

The first thing Helena Guergis did with a federal vote imminent was to take a $35,000 rebate cheque from Elections Canada due to the Conservatives in her riding and fling it back to Ottawa.

Thus was fired the first shot in the Conservative civil war unfolding north of Toronto, a political soap opera with huge national implications.

Elections Canada eventually resent the money — a subsidy based on 2008 vote tallies — after an appeal from the riding association, which now backs Conservative candidate Kellie Leitch.

“I made a political statement,” says a resolute Guergis.

She worked hard for it as a candidate in 2008 and now the party no longer wants her, Guergis reasons.

“She made a political statement and nothing happened,’’ says a dismissive Leitch.

She has grown the riding association back into the formidable force it always has been here, she says.

Simcoe-Grey is a riding unlike any in the country.

It features two young, strong-willed, competitive women duking it out while espousing support for the same policies and political ideology, even using the same colour schemes for their ubiquitous lawn signs.

They both come by their political ambitions honestly, dating their involvement in party politics to their adolescence. One has been bounced from cabinet, another may be headed there.

It’s the doctor versus the disowned.

Guergis, 42, of course, is the one taking on her own one-time leader, Stephen Harper, after her expulsion from cabinet and caucus, calling herself the subject of a “PMO smear,” vowing a return to Ottawa as an Independent Conservative.

Leitch, 40, a renowned physician and Order of Ontario recipient, touted as an eventual cabinet minister, maybe even leadership material one day, is the “official’’ Conservative candidate.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was with her the day she announced she would seek the nomination.

She is receiving the backing and riding visits from the likes of Bill Davis, Peter MacKay, Julian Fantino, Hugh Segal and Pamela Wallin.

Guergis has accused the Leitch campaign of stealing her signs, pokes at Leitch as the parachute candidate from Toronto, skewers her for parading around with “unelected senators.”

“I say, keep bringing it on,’’ Guergis says.

She mocks Leitch for her desire to continue to run a clinic in nearby Orillia, deriding her as a part-time MP who would be a part-time surgeon.

Leitch emphasizes her medical bona fides, posing in her surgical whites on her campaign literature, calling herself Dr. Kellie Leitch on her signs, even dispensing medical advice while making house calls on voters.

She would practice only four days a year at an Orillia clinic, laughs off the sign-pilfering accusation and reminds voters she has lived in the riding since 2005.

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“We don’t talk about our opponents,’’ she says.

Easily said, but in a battle with Guergis, not easily done.

On the morning the Star visited with Leitch over coffee and bagels at her custom-built home in Creemore, her primary opponent was dominating national newscasts, websites and newspapers with her wounded call for justice from Harper.

Like it or not, Leitch has to deal with a blowback of support for Guergis, compliments of Harper, the man who is counting on her to keep a reliable Conservative riding reliably Conservative.

Harper’s disdain for the incumbent is so obvious, it is playing to the Guergis narrative here.

Conservative voters here — and that is clearly the dominating tribe — are clearly torn.

Guergis says everywhere she goes, voters are telling her she got a “raw deal.’’

And right on cue, Aubrey Bearce, of nearby Nottowa, picks up the refrain at the Tim Hortons next door to the Leitch campaign headquarters

“She got a raw deal,’’ Bearce says. “Even a murderer gets a day in court.’’

Conservatives have held this riding for 113 of the 144 years since Confederation.

They like their MPs to be local and Leitch has to deal with a perception that she is a Toronto outsider who liked to ski here, so she built a house.

It will come down to a vote for loyalty, without the Ottawa clout, versus the perceived outsider who is very much inside the hall of power.

Oh, there is one other possible result on May 2.

The two powerful women may leave each other on the side of the road in this struggle and we’ll all be scrambling to explain how an unknown Liberal named Alex Smardenka, a co-owner of two Boston Pizzas and one Swiss Chalet franchise in the riding, was heading to Ottawa.

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