Corbella: Scandal or economy? You get to choose

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Politicking — like sausage-making — is ugly business. With apologies to the late Otto von Bismarck for messing with his famous quote about laws and sausages, “it’s better not to see them being made”.

That, however, is what has happened with the so-called “kamikaze candidate” scandal — a.k.a. the “stalking horse” scandal — swirling around the United Conservative Party.

A large document dump of private emails shows that Jason Kenney’s UCP leadership team worked very closely with Jeff Callaway’s leadership team in 2017 to come up with strategies, talking points, graphics and videos so that Callaway could target Kenney’s main leadership rival, Brian Jean, making it possible for Kenney to remain above the fray.

In an effort to appear as though the Kenney team didn’t engage in dirty politics, it engaged in dirty politics. It’s hypocritical and unsavoury.

Is it enough, however, to help Premier Rachel Notley’s unpopular NDP government — which is way behind in recent polls — to hold onto power when Albertans vote on April 16? That will be the key question over the 28 days of the election campaign that Notley launched Tuesday.

Notley’s election launch speech was held at the National Music Centre in Calgary’s downtown, which has been hollowed out over the past four years of her leadership, characterized as being unfriendly toward business. While Notley focused on slamming Kenney — over his social conservative views and now this controversy — Kenney is focusing on the economy and the numerous policy errors Notley and her government have made these past four years — that according to a recent C.D. Howe Institute report, $100 billion in planned spending on resource projects in Canada has disappeared and with it the evaporation of tens of thousands of high-paying jobs.

Duane Bratt, political science professor at Mount Royal University, says the dismal state of the Alberta economy could override any distaste voters may feel over revelations from the kamikaze candidate controversy.

“Given the state of the economy in this province over a four-year period, that’s a pretty powerful argument for a change,” said Bratt.

As for the scandal, Bratt says that, undoubtedly, more slimy sausage bits are sure to seep out over the next month of the campaign, but it’s a complicated story.

“I’ve always said that the dirtiest politics is always within its own party,” he said.

Bratt points to the nasty battles between Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin, or even Ralph Klein and Nancy Betkowski as examples of leadership races that got down and dirty. “It happens across all parties,” particularly parties with a real chance at forming government, said Bratt.

Back when most political parties held delegate conventions to choose a new leader, backroom dealing was more immediately obvious. Leadership campaigns would establish alliances, saying that if candidate A trails the other after a couple of ballots, they will throw their support behind candidate B. Now that party leaderships are held with votes not unlike a general election, such deal-making is less evident but no less real.

“When they had delegated conventions and you had multiple ballots there would be all sorts of conversations between teams to move delegates from one side to the other,” says Bratt, who recalls that in 2006 — when it was assumed Michael Ignatieff would win the leadership of the federal Liberals, dark-horse candidate Stephane Dion — after making backroom deals principally with Gerard Kennedy — beat out Ignatieff on the fourth ballot.

While Kenney has insisted the collaboration evident in the document dump between his campaign and that of Callaway’s is just normal communication between two leadership campaigns, Bratt says he’s not so sure.

“I’m not convinced of that given the degree to which they wrote speeches, timelines, talking points — all of that — but the idea that campaigns communicated, that is not unusual at all,” said Bratt.

When Maclean’s magazine asked Callaway to comment about what critics are calling collusion, he said: “I deny that there was a request that I run as a so-called ‘dark horse’ candidate. It simply did not happen. Jason Kenney sought my support as the former longtime president of the Wildrose. In response, I informed him in clear terms that I was considering a run for the leadership of the UCP.”

Callaway also said: “I was running to win. Any other characterization of the race is inaccurate.”

What is much more serious, however, than charges of co-operation are allegations made by Davies that $60,000 was donated to the Callaway campaign by a corporate entity, and then that money was given to other individuals to donate to the Callaway campaign — which would be a violation of election laws and is being investigated by the RCMP. Two Callaway campaign workers — including Davies — have been fined by Alberta’s election commissioner.

Kenney’s hour-long news conference Monday on the scandal focused on two main points: that communications between leadership campaigns, while sometimes unsavoury, is normal, and that the real scandal is Notley bringing in a carbon tax when she never mentioned it during the spring 2015 general election campaign and the resulting loss of jobs and investment in Alberta, leading to heartache and desperation for many Albertans.

Notley will focus on a complicated internal UCP political scandal — since she can’t run on her government’s dismal economic record and business-killing policies — while Kenney will try to run on business enhancing policies and rejuvenating the Alberta economy.

Kenney is focusing on the meat of what is top of mind with Albertans, Notley is trying to throw the meat away and focus on the sausage-making.

Albertans will decide what’s more important on April 16.

Licia Corbella is a Postmedia opinion columnist. lcorbella@postmedia.com