OTTAWA—In the final days before the election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s top campaign organizers floated the idea of telling voters he would not seek another term if he won, the Star has learned.

Sources say Harper’s strategists urged using British Prime Minister David Cameron’s successful “lame-duck” move to salvage a Conservative government, but realized it was too late for such a Hail Mary pass.

“It was not Harper’s record or his policies — it’s just that people hated Harper and we saw it happening early,” said one insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal campaign machinations.

Because the Tories’ research was confirming that fear, they considered replicating Cameron’s bold gambit of earlier this year when he promised to serve only a final five-year term.

But it soon became clear to those who trial-ballooned the idea to a handful of trusted party insiders and candidates that the tactic would backfire over questions about who would be Harper’s successor.

“The instant response was, ‘Well who am I voting for then? Am I voting for Jason Kenney because then I’m definitely not voting Conservative and I’m definitely not supporting your campaign,’ ” said another Conservative source who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

It was a sign of desperation in a disheartened re-election bid — and also a sobering recognition the leader-centred campaign had failed in its central thrust because voters were rallying to the more likeable Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.

Two weeks ago, the Conservative war room realized NDP support was collapsing and Canadians were shifting to the Liberals as agents of change.

That meant the Conservatives would lose badly in places like the Greater Toronto Area, where they had won seats in 2011 because the NDP had split the vote, enabling Tory candidates to come up the middle.

Senior Conservative organizer Ken Boessenkool even called New Democrats, advising them to turn their guns on the Liberals or both the Conservatives and the NDP would lose.

Sources said the Conservative re-election effort was deeply divided into factions loyal to campaign manager Jenni Byrne and those backing Harper confidants Ray Novak and Guy Giorno.

Byrne was yanked off Harper’s plane and dispatched back to headquarters.

Spokesperson Kory Teneycke struggled to contain damaging stories about Novak’s knowledge of the $90,000 paid to Mike Duffy to make his Senate expense controversy go away, and the role of a divisive Australian political operative Lynton Crosby in the Canadian campaign.

A mid-campaign palace coup against Byrne, who helmed the successful 2011 Conservative majority election victory, failed but bruised egos and hurt feeling persisted throughout the extended 11-week writ period.

Against that fractious backdrop, the Tories concluded they could not win the election.

That forced them to “secure the core,” confided another insider.

In order to motivate their base, the Conservative campaign used the niqab issue, which played well in Quebec and rural Ontario, while also stoking fears of Islamic terrorism that disgusted some Tories.

“We didn’t need to go there. We should have been talking about pocketbook issues not jihadists,” complained the Conservative operative.

Beyond the divisive debate over Muslim veiled women’s right to wear a niqab during citizenship ceremonies or in the public service, there was the Syrian refugee crisis, which painted the Harper government as uncaring.

But a senior Conservative who spoke on background said it was clearly a tactical mistake to push the niqab message so hard because it alienated voters outside Quebec.

Similarly, the Tories’ “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line undermined the party in some ethnic communities that had rallied to them in 2011.

At the same time, Byrne argued for a large Etobicoke rally on the final weekend of the campaign with discredited former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, best known for smoking crack cocaine while in office then repeatedly lying about it.

Some in the campaign argued strenuously against the move, saying it would hurt the party’s candidates in Toronto, Mississauga, and Brampton, where they were wiped out Monday night.

But the last-ditch Ford rally Saturday got the go-ahead — Harper even posed for photographs, widely circulated on social media, with Ford and his brother, Doug Ford, who was the runner-up to Toronto Mayor John Tory in last October’s municipal election.

In Boessenkool’s view, the key turning points that marked the campaign are very different:

First, he said the Conservatives succeeded in “not getting killed” in the polls by late August, after the Duffy trial began and economic headwinds dominated news coverage.

Second, the NDP lost control of its “change” message when it shifted into prime ministerial takeover mode and left the field open to Trudeau, and when that happened, Conservative prospects sank.

Third, the Conservatives did not foresee the ability of Justin Trudeau’s senior team — Katie Telford and Gerry Butts — to run a “near perfect campaign” that effectively countered the main Conservative message.

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“They jiu jitsued our ‘He’s just not ready’ ads.”

On Monday night it all unfolded as the Conservatives’ campaign feared it would.

It was worse. In the early going it looked like the party might hang on to 120 seats. By evening’s end, early results showed it had only 99.

Campaign chair Giorno ascribed the Conservative loss to the collapse of the NDP vote, and said, “I’m the chair of the campaign. To the extent we fell short of the mark, I’m accountable, the buck stops with me, I take responsibility for that. There’s no doubt about that, I’m not going to comment on how the NDP ran its campaign, the results speak for themselves, their vote collapsed and they handed the Liberals a majority.”

It stung.

Harper took the stage to deliver an exit speech — one of four he’d had written but the one sources say they least expected to need — acknowledging a Liberal majority. He reminded supporters he and they had built a Conservative party to last.

Right to the end, Harper, a message control freak in government, moved to control how his last speech would be covered by the media in refusing to utter the words that he was quitting as Conservative leader. Two sources said he did not want that to be the sound-bite that lived on in every post-election story about his legacy for years to come.

Harper left it to party president John Walsh to issue a brief statement kicking off a leadership race that will see caucus elect an interim leader to replace him, and a committee struck to oversee the contest ahead.

After Harper left the stage, he gathered his entire campaign team and thanked them, repeating what he’d said on national television minutes ago. “We gave it everything we could. You did nothing wrong. I’m the leader, I’m the one that takes 100 per cent responsibility for this.”

Some there have said that was the main problem of his campaign. Winners win as a team, and lose as a team. And Harper was a one-man show to the end.

One said Harper bears a greater responsibility than simply for poor campaign tactics — his overall strategy failed him.

“You have to have enough self-awareness to know you have a best-before date in politics. Certainly the NDP collapse was a problem, but I think it was our tone” that turned off Canadians. This senior Conservative said the antipathy towards Harper, seven among Conservatives had reached a boiling point.

“Even if we’d somehow formed a minority last night he wouldn’t have had the legitimacy to govern caucus because everybody heard that.”

Harper has told people close to him he is going to be fine.

The long campaign took a toll at times. He escaped the bubble one evening in Toronto to go watch football at the home of TSN host Gord Miller. A campaign source denies there was any campaign re-set among those there, just a chance for Harper to relax. Now Harper must seriously look at his options. At 56, he’s got many working years ahead of him.

He once mused to an aide he could see himself teaching high school. Some expect him to do international work. Others say what he will certainly not do is second-guess a new prime minister, but step out of the spotlight.

Laureen, his wife, long ago talked him into buying a second property in Alberta in addition to their Calgary home. The Harpers have bought land at a bend in the Elbow River. It was a move she had to talk him into. Now he loves it, and the idea of building a new property there is one of his next long-term projects.

After that, it’s anyone’s guess.