Pierre Poilievre decided he was out before he was officially in the race to become the next Conservative leader.After teasing out a leadership run for weeks, including giving interviews to various …

Pierre Poilievre decided he was out before he was officially in the race to become the next Conservative leader.
After teasing out a leadership run for weeks, including giving interviews to various media outlets on what his policy positions would be, Poilievre quietly pulled the plug Thursday.
He called top advisors including John Baird and Jenni Byrne before letting the rest of his campaign team know he was out.
The news was broken on Twitter by The Sun.
After weeks of teasing out a run for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and planning an announcement for this Sunday, multiple sources tell me that @PierrePoilievre will NOT run to be leader of the CPC. Details to come. #cdnpoli
— Brian Lilley (@brianlilley) January 23, 2020
In a phone call Thursday afternoon, Poilievre said his heart wasn’t fully in the race and that you can’t be “kind-of in a leadership race.”
The MP described how he spent 14 months campaigning to keep his seat in October’s election, effectively missing, he said, the first year of his newborn daughter’s life.
Now he said he wasn’t prepared to keep missing her life.
“I’m on my way for the first time in a long time to pick up my daughter from daycare. I hope I’ll have a chance to do that more often,” Poilievre said.
Poilievre was seen as the candidate running from the right side of the party, describing himself as a fiscal hawk and “true blue” conservative.
“I believe deeply in the principles on which I was contemplating a leadership run, I’m going to keep pushing for those things,” Poilievre said.
The announcement comes the same week as heavyweights Rona Ambrose and Jean Charest both announced they would not seek the leadership.
His departure leaves current MP Erin O’Toole and former MP Peter MacKay as the front runners.
Both men served in the cabinet of former prime minister Stephen Harper although MacKay’s tenure was much longer, he was also one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party.
MacKay will launch his campaign on Saturday in Stellarton, Nova Scotia.
O’Toole’s campaign has yet to set a date.