Christine Elliott won't play 'macho game' with PC leadership rivals

Progressive Conservative leadership hopeful Christine Elliott is defending her decision not to release the number of party memberships her campaign sold before Saturday's cut off period.

Barrie MP Patrick Brown claims to have sold more than 40,000 of the $10 PC memberships, which entitle people to vote for the new party leader in May.

London-area MPP Monte McNaughton boasts sales of just under 20,000 memberships, but a party source puts that figure closer to 6,000.

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Elliott calls her rivals' claims "wild and crazy," and says she's not going to engage in the "chest-pounding bravado that the other candidates are getting into."

A party source estimates Elliott sold about 13,000 party memberships, but her campaign said Saturday night they'd sold at least twice that number.

However, Elliott says she's very confident in her numbers and that her support is province-wide, not concentrated in just a few ridings.

"I'm not going to play that kind of macho game that these other two guys are engaging in," she said. "I'm not conceding anything. We're going to find out from the party in the next couple days where things are."

Every PC member can vote for the new leader, but the votes will be weighted so each of the 107 ridings gets 100 points, which means where the memberships were sold is almost as important as how many.