Paul Wells book on the rise of Stephen Harper is out. CTV Politics blog has an excert:

During the 2006-2007 election campaign a simple mistake could have cost the Conservatives the win. A DVD with what were supposedly the initital Harper ads got sent out with every ad the Conservatives conceived:

Campaign ads are sent to television stations as paid advertising, and also to news organization in the hope that they’ll do a story about the ads. A little earned media to go along with your paid media. On the night the the first ads went out, [Conservative war room strategist] Yaroslav Baran got a call at Conservative headquarters in Ottawa.

It was the Conservative ad people in Toronto. They’d sent the wrong DVD to news organizations. These discs didn’t contain only the ads that had been approved for the first blitz, the hokey fake-interview Harper ads. These DVDs had every Conservative ad on them. Dozens of ads. Positive ads, attack ads, ads for contingencies that might never materialize. Mockups of ads the leader hadn’t even seen. If they got out, the Conservatives would have (a) sabotaged their own ad strategy for the rest of the campaign; (b) shown themselves to be plotting a negative campaign while Harper tried to recycle himself as Mr. Forward-looking Policy; (c) looked like idiots.

Baran started to sweat. How far had these tell-all DVDs travelled? Good news. The Conservatives had this much luck, at least: so far, the courier had delivered only one, to Sun Media.

Baran needed that DVD. What to do? Probably a heist was out of the question. Come clean? Baran called Lorrie Goldstein, a Toronto Sun columnist. His plan was to offer a major scoop down the road in return for a major favour tonight. But Goldstein wasn’t picking up his phone. So Baran just called Sun Media’s news desk.

Paul Wells: Right Side Up (also blogs at Inkless Wells) The Chapters website goofed on the cover pic on their website. And it wasn’t in stock in the chain in Harpers home town.