CALGARY—United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney says the actions of his 2017 leadership campaign team, currently at the centre of an evolving political scandal, were completely normal.
At a Monday news conference, reporters peppered Kenney with questions for almost an hour just two days after a cache of emails leaked to multiple outlets showed that his campaign team controlled critical aspects of another candidate’s bid in the party’s 2017 leadership race.
This kind of political manoeuvring has been dubbed a “kamikaze” campaign because leadership hopeful Jeff Callaway allegedly ran at the request of Kenney in order to undermine former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean.
“I was clear, when I was first asked about this (back in December), that our two campaigns were communicating. That would be normal in a competitive leadership election, where you have, particularly, a preferential ballot,” said Kenney.
Kenney maintained he had no knowledge of a plot to run Callaway as a kamikaze, even though two people involved in the campaign, Cameron Davies and Happy Mann, both told the Star they attended meetings with him where discussions about it took place.
“Nothing unusual in two political campaigns communicating,” Kenney said in response to a reporter asking if anything unethical happened during the race.
Read more:
What we know so far: Timeline of the United Conservative ‘kamikaze campaign’ investigation
As new revelations emerged Monday that the Callaway bid may have been fuelled by illegal money, the party and Kenney continued to deny that he was involved in any financial wrongdoing linked to the Callaway campaign.
The RCMP and Alberta’s election commissioner are also currently probing allegations that irregular financial contributions were fuelling Callaway’s UCP leadership bid.
Over the weekend, The Star and several media outlets obtained leaked documents that alleged Kenney was aware of Callaway’s kamikaze campaign from the beginning, and cast doubt on Kenney’s previous denials that he was involved at all. Then, on Monday, a report in Maclean’s magazine revealed allegations from a former Callaway staffer that the campaign was funded in part by a $60,000 payment from a corporate entity, which was redistributed to appear as if it came from several donors.
“Nobody who had been in our core campaign knew of any of the sources of funds of Mr. Callaway’s financing,” Kenney said.
Callaway hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment from the Star, but told Maclean’s he fully denies the allegations.
The revelations come on the eve of the Alberta provincial election, which could be called any day now. The law requires a vote be held before the end of May.
The financial allegations published by Maclean’s were made by Davies, a communications adviser for Callaway’s campaign. Davies previously said the leaked documents obtained by the Star were his, and he has handed them over to the election commissioner.
In February, the election commissioner fined Davies $15,000 for obstruction of an investigation. Davies said he is planning to appeal the fine, chalking it up to a misunderstanding.
The documents obtained by the Star — a cache of emails and a statement by Davies — showed that the Kenney campaign controlled major aspects of the Callaway campaign, providing strategic plans, attack ads, speeches, debate talking points, and a plan for when Callaway would drop out of the race. The efforts were aimed at attacking Jean, who polls indicated had more support than Kenney in the summer of 2017.
Premier Rachel Notley, speaking to reporters at a news conference on Monday, said the UCP has a “very significant scandal right now” and “at its very best, it amounts to very dark backroom politics.”
“We’re going to let Jason Kenney and the UCP focus on those issues and we’re going to focus on things that matter to all of Alberta,” the premier said.
The UCP formed in 2017 after a merger between the Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose parties. During the leadership campaign, Callaway, a former Wildrose president, was publicly critical of Jean. Callaway dropped out of the campaign a month before the race and endorsed Kenney, who went on to win the leadership.
“The primary basis of the dark horse candidate inception was to tear down those popularity numbers of Brian Jean’s to level the playing field,” Davies told the Star.
Official information about the probes into the Callaway campaign is scarce, as the election commissioner is bound by legislation not to talk publicly about investigations. But as information about the scandal continues to trickle out, questions have swirled about whether the political machinations detailed in documents leaks are illegal.
“Even if it wasn’t illegal, it was unethical,” deputy premier Sarah Hoffman said Sunday.
Alberta election law says individuals can donate a maximum of $4,000 per year to any combination of parties, constituency associations, candidates, nomination candidates, and leadership candidates. Their names must be recorded and reported in financial disclosure documents.
If Davies’ financial allegations are true, the $60,000 payment could have been a breach of that law.
Donating to a campaign with money that isn’t yours is also illegal in Alberta. The commissioner fined one donor $3,500 in late February for donating to Callaway with money that didn’t belong to her.
Lori Williams, a political science professor at Mount Royal University, said beyond questions of legality, questions of the UCP’s ethics could impact the party’s fate in the upcoming election. (So far, the UCP has a comfortable lead in early polls.)
“Legal technicalities don’t make a lot of sense to most folks ... (but) whether it’s wrong or not, I don’t think that’s very difficult to understand,” she said. “It starts to add up.”
The original split between the UCP and Wildrose parties happened in part because of the Wildrosers’ frustrations with PC cronyism, Williams noted. If the UCP leadership appears to be going back on its promises to listen to the party’s grassroots, divisions between the two factions could re-emerge and cause damage, she added.
“For the Wildrosers who consented to the merger in good faith and wanted a fair competition for who was going to be leader, this is going to make them mad.”
That division appears to already be appearing. In a Thursday night tweet, Wayne Anderson, a UCP MLA and former Wildrose member, compared the scandal to that of Richard Nixon, the former U.S. president who resigned amid impeachment proceedings. “Somehow lately I’m reminded of a famous quote during Watergate, ‘What did he know and when did he know it.’”
Anderson lost his nomination race and won’t be running again this spring.
Emma McIntosh is an environment, justice and investigative reporter with Star Calgary. Follow her on Twitter at @EmmaMci
