Joe Volpe has always been a dirty fighter. And he doesn't just play hardball with the other parties.Ask Roland de Corneille, the sitting Liberal MP Volpe torpedoed in 1988.
More than 4,000 people packed a hall in a Toronto airport hotel to settle one of the year's biggest local Liberal disputes. Mr. Volpe addressed the meeting first. His supporters went to the voting booth en masse as Mr. de Corneille headed to the podium.Even his own staff are a little bit wary of his insatiable ambition. He's not known as much of a team player... it's all about Joe.
"He cued everybody. He organized everybody to get up and block the voting booths, so only his people could get in there," George Berger, who was then Mr. de Corneille's constituency assistant, said of Mr. Volpe in an interview. "If you have 2,500 people waiting in line before you, you're going to say 'the hell with it, I'm going home.' "
"Joe's a bit of an 'I fought for this my whole life, and I want to keep it to myself' kind of guy," said one former aide. "But the way to build power in politics is to share it."
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