OTTAWA - Nathan Cullen might not have thrown his hat into the NDP leadership ring had he not been encouraged by the late Jack Layton.
And the British Columbia MP says he might still have stayed out of the race if he'd thought Layton had anointed someone else as his preferred successor.
Cullen praised his former leader Tuesday as a unique politician who was unafraid of the leadership aspirations of others and actually went out of his way to cultivate potential successors.
"You know how leaders can be? They see shadows everywhere," Cullen said in a wide-ranging, surprisingly frank interview with The Canadian Press.
"Jack, for me, was a different kind of leader, not paranoid; generous and strategic and always cultivating the next step."
In his case, Cullen said the leadership issue came up shortly after he first arrived in Ottawa in 2004 and began taking French lessons. He didn't realize that was seen as "code" in the nation's capital for having leadership ambitions.
He said some of Layton's handlers started "getting antsy" that he was plotting to replace the leader, although Layton himself seemed "oblivious." After some "tense" months, Cullen took Layton to dinner to assure him he had no designs on his job.
"His response was so Layton. He said, 'Why not?"'
Over the next seven years, Cullen said Layton repeatedly encouraged him to aim high. He assumes others received similar advice.
Some New Democrats have speculated that Layton favoured Brian Topp as his successor. Topp was first out of the leadership gate, with rumours of his candidacy beginning a day after Layton died of cancer in August.
The former party president was one of Layton's top advisers and a key architect of his electoral successes. Topp also helped craft a manifesto for social democracy which Layton penned on his deathbed.
Before deciding to take the plunge, Cullen said he checked out the rumour that Layton favoured Topp.
"I went to some people that were in the room to find that out. It was important for me. Like, if there had been a laying on of the hands kind of thing or if this had been Jack's hopes and plans, I wanted to know that ... and I was assured strongly that it wasn't (true)," he said.
"If it had been Jack's calculation and Jack really felt that this was important then it would change the way I thought about running because I respected his instincts so much."
Cullen said he "had no idea" Topp, who had always been a key backroom strategist, had ambition to become an elected player, much less leader. Topp has since become the presumed frontrunner, racking up an impressive roster of endorsement from party luminaries like former leader Ed Broadbent and former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow.
While Topp's campaign has been "well choreographed," Cullen took issue with the notion that Topp is a shoo-in.
"Very few establishment candidates win within an anti-establishment party like the NDP. If you're seen as the choice of the inside, there's a number of our members that automatically want to look elsewhere."
Cullen said he's been finding plenty of support among grassroots organizers, who are "suspicious that a coronation serves no one."
He's also been finding support among people who've never voted NDP but are joining to back his proposal to strike non-compete deals with Liberals and Greens in some Tory-held ridings to ensure the defeat of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"I'm the only (leadership) candidate in this race who's beaten a Conservative to get here. I know how to do it," Cullen said, adding that former Liberal and Green opponents now work with him in his northern B.C. riding.
Cullen said he doesn't want the leadership race to be a dull affair in which contenders are "in violent agreement" on big policy questions and differ only on minute details as they vie for support among existing party members.
"In a sense I'm doing something quite bold or, depends on your point of view, risky. I'm speaking past the existing party membership ... I understand people who will say, 'This is an offence to me as a New Democrat' but I'm also going to fill the room with people who have never been in the room before."
He said backroom players in all parties tend to believe politics "is war, you have to knee-cap your opponent, aggression is the only thing that pays off." He begs to differ.
"Turning voters off, particularly young voters, does a disservice to all of us ... We're not generous enough in our politics."
A former small-business owner, Cullen cast himself as a pragmatist who wants to see the party maintain its role as the nation's social conscience while showing it can manage the economy and be friendly to business. He said the party needs to "drop the 1950s rhetoric" that business "is inherently destructive and evil."
Cullen said he's as comfortable meeting with bankers as "the credit union crowd and I think we need to do both."
On other issues, Cullen:
-- Said he learned two important lessons from Layton: to be pragmatic and to be himself.
-- Acknowledged Layton made some mistakes, including initially trying to block Green Leader Elizabeth May from the leaders' televised debates during the 2008 campaign. Cullen put that down to bad advice from backroom strategists, whom he declined to name.
-- Said he's working to ensure a united NDP front against the Harper government's bill to scrap the long-gun registry. Cullen has in the past favoured eliminating the registry but he said the bill goes too far, destroying the data collected and declassifying dangerous semi-automatic firearms.
He said his position is based on the views of "reasonable" gun owners he's been representing, not "gun nuts" who "think a grenade launcher is a reasonable choice when you go hunting."
However, unlike Topp, he doesn't think the vote on the bill should be whipped.
-- Joked that he keeps a list of MPs he can't stand, which he's been forced to keep to just two names at a time for his own sanity.
"It's just too easy around this place to build up that personal animosity," he said, calling some Tory MPs "certifiable" in their opposition of women's rights and gay rights.
