Maurizio Bevilacqua becomes the first candidate to drop out of the Liberal leadership race, no doubt for financial reasons.

I’ve always been very impressed with Maurizio and he was certainly among the best 3 or 4 candidates in this race, in my opinion. He’s certainly a future Finance Minister and, one would imagine, this may not be his last leadership bid. You can read my profile of him here and my interview with him here.

After interviewing him, it was pretty clear to me that he’d never back Ignatieff but it is certainly a bit surprising to see him endorsing Bob Rae. It’s undeniably a big coup for Rae; life long, right wing Liberals from Ontario who don’t have shares in Power Corp are certainly a valuable commodity to him.