After testifying in the SNC-Lavalin affair, Butts had been licking his wounds and reconnecting with his family after the brutally long hours he had worked in the PMO. His wife, Jodi, joked she should send Jody Wilson-Raybould a present to thank her for engineering her husband’s exit from politics. But on a trip to Tuscany to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, he told her he thought he should go back for the 2019 campaign. She reluctantly agreed. “You know what? If you don’t go back and they lose, you’re going to blame yourself for the rest of your life. So just go do it. But you’ve got to promise me on election night it’s all over.”
