David Herle

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David Herle is a Canadian political consultant and pollster and one of the top advisors to former Prime Minister Paul Martin. He was a senior partner at Earnscliffe Strategy Group, a consulting firm with close ties to Martin. He is now a principal of the Gandalf group, a leading polling and market research firm.

Herle has been active in the Liberal Party since his youth, and was a key strategist for the Martin leadership campaign. In the 2004 election,and 2006 election he served as Martin's campaign co-chair. During the 2004 election, as prospects for the Liberals began looking poorly, Herle was a strong advocate of demonizing Martin's primary opponent, Stephen Harper. Although this strategy was criticized by Conservatives as inaccurate, it resonated enough with Canadian voters for Martin to salvage a minority government. The same strategy was less successful less than two years later as the Gomery inquiry took its toll, the RCMP embarrassed the Liberals with the Income Trust issue, and Herle's tactics reached new excesses with the now-famous attack ad accusing the Conservatives of planning to deploy the army to city streets as a distortion of a Conservative campaign commitment to increase the number of police officers. This ad (Stephen Harper wants to put "men. with guns. on our streets...we're not making this up.") was seen as one of the final straws in the election that broke the Liberal Party's credibility and ended the atmosphere of worry they had successfully generated at a possible Conservative government.

Herle has been a strong supporter of Martin since Martin's first, failed bid at the Liberal leadership, which resulted in the election of Jean Chrétien as Liberal Party leader and three successive terms of Chrétien as prime minister. Herle was among the most prominent Liberals pushing for Chrétien to retire, to make way for Paul Martin. That has put him at odds with notable Chretien supporters within the Liberal Party, such as Warren Kinsella, with that animosity occasionally erupting into public view.^[1]

Herle has a reputation for using what some have called strong-arm tactics to achieve his objectives. This reputation was notably reinforced in a public confrontation with the former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Sheila Copps. In a report in the Toronto Sun, Copps charged Herle with intimidation, a charge Herle denied.^[2]

Even after 13 years of power, and the accumulated problems associated with that, many Liberals blame their electoral loss to the Conservatives on Herle's confrontational approach and unwillingness to listen to long-time Liberal strategists and candidates.