An autopsy without a corpse is always premature, but some Progressive Conservatives are ready to dissect the party’s troubled campaign even before next Tuesday’s provincial vote.
Several ex-politicians and campaigners interviewed Friday blamed the budget, the absence of corporate tax hikes, Premier Jim Prentice’s public persona, the early election, the floor-crossings, and the seeming inability of the party to gain momentum.
Former minister Doug Griffiths, who was in the legislature for 13 years, says: “Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many gaffes in a campaign, in all the ones I was in.
“It seems like every time they start to gain some momentum, there’s some countermeasure.
“Jim did very well in the debate, but then for three days everyone was distracted by the ‘math is difficult’ comment and it just sucked the life out of any gains he made.”
Griffiths, who suffered a severely broken leg in a boating accident last summer, told Prentice last fall he couldn’t be in cabinet, and decided not to run again in his Battle River-Wainwright riding.
The former municipal affairs minister says he likes Prentice a great deal, but hardly recognizes the person he knows in this campaign.
“He’s not the Jim I saw in the PC leadership campaign who was so sincere and forthright. It’s like he’s so guarded now, maybe because the polling numbers put him on the defensive a bit.
“A couple of deep breaths and relaxing and being human I think would help.
“It’s the same thing I always said about (former premier) Ed Stelmach. He was a straight-up, sincere, regular guy. But as soon as he became premier, they put him in a three-piece suit and he wasn’t Ed any more.
“Well, that wasn’t Ed’s style.
“Jim has kind of done the same thing. He’s working so hard to be premier he’s forgotten to be Jim. I think it happens to so many leaders who are trying to live up to expectations, when what Albertans expect is a real person.”
Griffiths also thinks Prentice would have avoided the “look in the mirror ” uproar if he’d just apologized immediately.
“Fumble, stumble, smile, carry on, apologize when an apology needs to be made. That’s what Ralph Klein did, and he was always just Ralph.”
Another former PC minister, who asked not to be named, said the budget is a big problem in his southern rural area.
“The failure to include some increase in corporate tax has been very poorly received,” he said.
Problems with candidates — the Jonathan Denis court case with his wife, for instance — have also done serious damage to the campaign, he believes.
And the former PC MLA wasn’t happy with Notley’s performance in the TV debate, which many loyal Tories found to be rude and aggressive.
“I thought her conduct was quite disturbing. I think she was taking her lesson from watching Fox News or something, where everybody shouts all over everybody else.”
Overall, this ex-minister said, “It’s a strange atmosphere out there, I must admit. I just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Griffiths concurs about the unpopular budget.
“The miracle of the PC party has always been that it finds middle ground that pulls people together,” he said.
“But with this budget, the people who want no new taxes are mad because taxes went up. The people who wanted them to go up are mad because they didn’t go up enough, and didn’t include corporate taxes.
“So, instead of finding the middle ground that gave everybody a little bit of what they want, they found a middle ground that gave nobody anything they want.”
In battleground Edmonton, where every PC candidate is under serious pressure from the New Democrats, a senior campaigner said the early election “gave Jim a reputation for arrogance. People thought we’d just do whatever we want.”
He believes the powerful NDP surge “is not so much about Rachel — it’s about anybody but Progressive Conservative.”
“It’s people voting against us, not for them. She shouldn’t be taking a lot of credit or comfort in the numbers she gets.”
With many PCs saying such things even before the election, one can only imagine the recriminations should they lose.
And yet, not a single one of them seems to believe that can happen.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
dbraid@calgaryherald.com
