MONTREAL—On a day-to-day basis, few Parliament watchers pay attention to Lévis-Lobtinière MP Jacques Gourde. On the Hill, his main claim to fame is to have been the only Conservative from Quebec to not make the cut of Stephen Harper’s last cabinet. He spent his party’s decade in power on the backbench of the government. In the new Parliament, the scenery is different but Gourde’s role is as low-key as in the previous ones.

But outside the bubble, the fourth-term MP is distinguished by his electoral resilience. In contrast with colleagues invested with more gravitas such as Michael Fortier — Harper’s handpicked senatorial minister for Montreal — or Lawrence Cannon, Josée Verner and Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Gourde kept his rural Quebec seat through challenging Conservative times. He even survived the 2011 orange wave.

Gourde’s forte is organization. He cut his teeth as a volunteer for the provincial Action Démocratique du Québec party and the federal Conservatives at a time when both were facing uphill battles just to be taken seriously. In 2006 he decided to run.

In that federal campaign, Gourde’s riding was one of the few places where Harper could hope to draw a decent crowd. On one visit to the rural riding, a cortege of 50 pick-up trucks was reportedly on hand to provide a motorcade for the Conservative leader. It probably helped that it was the dead of winter and that Gourde’s fellow farmers had a bit of time on their hands.

As the long campaign to select a successor to Harper slowly gets underway, most Conservative MPs are keeping their cards close to their chests. They want to see the full line-up before they commit to a camp.

But Gourde has already made his choice. He is the co-chair of Maxime Bernier’s leadership campaign and more of a catch than appearances or titles would suggest.

For, notwithstanding his native son status, it is hardly a given that Bernier will earn the backing of many more Quebec MPs.

His penchant for taking a knife to sacred cows has not necessarily endeared him to his colleagues.

He once mused about doing away with the language law — a notion that has only negative traction within Quebec’s political class.

He believes Canada’s corporations, including Bombardier, should be weaned from federal subsidies.

More recently, Bernier came out against supply management, a program of iconic status in rural Quebec. Gourde had to scramble to explain that stance to his own constituents. He ended up soft-pedalling it.

All of which is to say that when the time comes to collect endorsements, the Beauce MP might not be overwhelmed with Quebec caucus support. But by then, it may not matter all that much.

In a one-member, one-vote leadership contest, the weight of the party establishment is infinitely less significant than in the days when so-called ex-officio delegates made up as much as a third of those who voted at delegated conventions.

A solid organization can trump myriad high-profile endorsements.

Just ask former Ontario Tory minister Christine Elliott. She had impeccable connections to the party establishment and a proven track record . . . and she was trounced by federal backbencher Patrick Brown in last year’s Ontario Tory leadership vote.

Could Bernier pull the same trick at the federal level? That would depend on whether his campaign has boots on the ground in the other regions of the country. This is one operation where having support a mile wide, even if only an inch deep, is actually better than the alternative.

In the Conservative leadership arithmetic, every riding is worth an equal number of points regardless of the size of its membership. Securing a solid footing in Quebec — the province with the second-highest number of seats — early on could turn Bernier into more of a force to contend with than his opponents expect or the polls suggest.

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Winning Quebec will not alone win anyone the Conservative leadership next spring but being shut out of the province could be fatal — especially if Ontario splits three or four ways.

While so-called big name candidates such as Jason Kenney and Peter MacKay fiddle with possible leadership bids, Bernier is preemptively locking Quebec votes. Sometimes the early bird does catch the worm!

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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