Tempting as it may be to characterize the latest development in the Redford Conservatives’ chaotic and incompetent election campaign as an April Fool’s joke, as befits today’s date, yesterday’s fertility fiasco is all too real.
Real enough, at any rate, that Alberta could have a Wildrose government after April 23.
Late Friday a Progressive Conservative staffer working in Premier Alison Redford’s office had a moment of lunacy that topped most of the other clangers in this ludicrous excuse for a campaign. Amanda Wilkie, 23, fired off an atomic Twitter attack on Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith that may go down in history as the Tweet Heard ‘Round the World.
Wilkie, whom we are reliably informed is no longer employed as an executive assistant in the premier’s office, Tweeted: “If @ElectDanielle likes young and growing families so much, why doesn’t she have children of her own? #wrp family pack = insincere”.
The Wildrose Party — which is nothing if it not smart and disciplined — sure acted as if it had anticipated just this. Smith responded immediately with a jab worthy of Justin Trudeau. She issued a statement: “When David and I married in 2006 we intended to have children together. After a few years we sought help from the Calgary Regional Fertility Clinic. I appreciated the support and assistance of the caring staff as we went through tests and treatments, but in the end we were not successful.”
With a DINK candidate (double income, no kids) touting family values and the Tories obviously planning to emphasize Redford’s empathetic image as the mother of a nine-year-old, the Wildrose campaign must have been lying in wait for just such an opportunity.
Moments after Smith’s riposte, everyone up to and including the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada was weighing in on the outrage. Redford started apologizing and explaining, as seems to be her instinct in a crisis, instead of keeping her lip zipped and remaining above the fray. In that instant, her family empathy evaporated like many of the other supposed advantages that got her elected Tory leader.
Redford’s chief campaign strategist, ardent Tweeter Stephen Carter, tried to blow Wilkie off as “as low as you can go on the totem pole” with “no role in the campaign whatsoever.” But surely there’s no excuse for this kind of blunder in any political campaign, let alone one that’s already on the ropes as a result of a series of rookie screw-ups!
Alert readers will recall that one of those campaign blunders was perpetrated via Tweet by Carter himself, when he called Edmonton Councillor Linda Sloan, president of the Urban Municipalities Association, a liar, and a malicious one at that, for criticizing the government. Soon after, Carter’s Tweets halted … for a spell … and he was reassigned from his government job as Redford’s chief of staff to working strictly for the campaign. Back in the day when he worked for Smith, Carter also got in trouble for making fun of then-premier Ed Stelmach’s Ukrainian accent in another Tweet.
So you’d think that of all people, Carter would have imposed a little discipline on who was saying what on Twitter during the campaign — and at least have read the riot act on unauthorized Tweeting to the premier’s staff.
Foolish Tweets are not the most serious problem plaguing Redford’s faltering campaign, of course. That would be the spectacle of MLAs from all parties, including the Wildrose, being paid $1,000 a month for being members of a committee that did nothing for nearly four years.
But again, presumably on her campaign’s advice, Premier Redford played this one all wrong. Instead of calling MLA compensation a mess just like she argued during her leadership campaign and noting that she’d appointed a retired Supreme Court judge to fix it, then saying nothing more until he reported after the election, she resorted to more apologies and explanations.
Redford infuriated her own caucus — and managed to make it look like they were guilty of a rip-off — by ordering them to pay back the money. She raised the issue of MLA retirement benefits, which had nothing to do with the story, giving the opposition one more stick to beat her with.
Meanwhile, boxed by Redford’s foolish fixed-election-period law and challenged by a well-organized and well-financed opponent for the first time in a generation, clueless Conservative candidates who never had to actually campaign are floundering on the doorsteps of their ridings, where furious voters are excoriating them over the money-for-nothing scandal.
Ironically, even before Smith’s fecundity became a political issue, an emergency meeting of the Conservative brain trust was scheduled yesterday morning to try to get the campaign back on the rails. Presumably the idea of replacing Carter was high on the agenda.
But the word on Tory Street after the meeting was that PC political operators with the skills to do the job — say, someone like lobbyist Hal Danchilla — won’t take it because they don’t have the required death wish.
Well, the Tories had better find someone fast. If the grownups aren’t back in charge soon, we’ll all have to get used to saying “Premier Danielle Smith.”
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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