Andrew Scheer began his campaign to woo Toronto’s suburban voters with optimistic messages about saving regular folks money.

He ended it Saturday with ominous warnings of a Liberal-NDP partnership, and Conservative activists nervous about their chances in Toronto’s all-important 905 ridings.

What was supposed to be a last-ditch pitch to Toronto voters was hijacked by questions about the Scheer team’s decision to hire an ex-Liberal rabble rouser to dig up dirt on their political rival, Maxime Bernier.

Documents leaked to the Globe and Mail and the CBC suggested the Conservatives hired Warren Kinsella’s Daisy Group to run a covert social media campaign against Bernier’s People’s Party by highlighting xenophobic remarks from the upstart party’s supporters.

Scheer was asked about the revelations more than a dozen times at a morning press conference in North York — and how appropriate it was to use outside contractors to do the Conservatives’ dirty work — but he refused to confirm or deny the party had contracted Kinsella.

“This is the kind of dirty politics that fuels Canadians’ cynicism about politics,” Bernier said at a news conference, adding that he had filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Canada Elections, the office that enforces Canada's election laws.

The stories and the campaign’s response rattled senior Conservative strategists — both connected to Scheer’s campaign and on the outside.

“People are saying: ‘Why are we associating with this former Liberal? This is where our (campaign contributions are) going?” complained one veteran Tory activist in a conversation with the Star.

“You have to understand in our party, we take loyalty seriously. Our members do not like this stuff — especially when it’s aimed at Max, who led on 12 of 13 ballots (at the 2017 leadership convention).”

The Star granted several Conservative sources anonymity to discuss internal party matters.

In a statement on his personal website Saturday evening, Kinsella said his client had not waived confidentiality so he could not name them publicly. But he said they deserved “credit, not criticism” for opposing Bernier.

Wherever Conservative supporters stand on Bernier, however, a number were critical of what they saw as another misstep by the Scheer campaign that has put a winnable election in jeopardy so close to election day.

If Scheer falls short of a majority government Monday night — as most public polling has suggested for weeks — one senior Tory suggested there could be a bloodletting in the party.

“A Conservative minority likely means a Liberal government and people are going to be walking around the leader’s office saying, ‘you’re gone and you’re gone and you’re gone,’” said the source, referring to Scheer’s top campaign officials who have apparently failed to reach out to other factions in the party.

“That could be the only way for Andrew to stay on as leader.”

Another well-connected Toronto Conservative was less dire, and suggested there would be little appetite within the party for a rebuild after just one election with Scheer at the helm. But the source said if Trudeau manages to pull off a second majority, after a campaign that has badly wounded the Liberal leader’s personal brand, the questions about Scheer’s leadership will grow louder.

Many were puzzled how Kinsella, a Chretien-era Liberal staffer and Sun News columnist, came to be in Scheer’s orbit.

But sources at Queen’s Park said the Tories came to trust Kinsella because he had helped the provincial party while Kathleen Wynne was Liberal premier.

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“We didn’t have a contract with him at the time, but he supplied us with damaging information about the Liberal campaign that we used against Wynne,” said a provincial PC source.

It is not known if there was ever a formal relationship between the ex-Liberal lobbyist and Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative campaign.

However, both Kinsella and his wife, Lisa Kinsella, were among the invited guests given VIP seating at Ford’s swearing-in on the front steps of the Ontario legislature on June 29, 2018.

With files from Bruce Campion-Smith, Alex Ballingall and The Canadian Press

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