A campaign insider speaks
Controversial author, Wildrose campaign manager, and the mastermind behind Stephen Harper’s early leadership campaign Tom Flanagan hosted the first of 12 Workshops on Social Science Research (WSSR) in Concordia’s Department of Political Science.
In Flanagan’s two-day workshop, Landing the Big One: Political Science in Pursuit of Power, he discussed power and influence, political campaigning, coalition building, and persuasion in the public realm.
At the end of the first day, members of the Concordia community and the general public were invited to hear Flanagan speak about the recent Alberta elections from his perspective as campaign manager for the Wildrose Party. Dozens turned out to hear what Flanagan had to say about his chosen party’s surprising defeat.
Danielle Smith’s Wildrose party held a comfortable lead in the polls throughout the campaign. As Flanagan recalled, everyone expected the upstart party to end 41 years of Conservative rule in Alberta.
“There were 21 published polls between March 26 and April 22, and Wildrose was leading in every single one,” Flanagan said. In the end, the polls were wrong. Albertans decided to stay the course, re-electing the Conservatives with a big majority of 61 seats in the 87-seat legislature.
“We were all shocked at the election result. It had not been indicated in the polls,” Flanagan said. “What happened? I don’t know for sure … I think the polling industry is going to have to re-examine its methodology.”
Flanagan acknowledged that a late shift in the polls favouring the Conservatives did take place, and he pointed the finger at several specific incidents. The standout, of course, was the unearthing of a blog post by Wildrose candidate and Pentecostal minister Allan Hunsperger, in which he wrote that homosexuals who continued to live the way they were born would “suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire.”
Another Wildrose candidate, Ron Leech, stated during a radio interview that he would have an advantage running for his riding as a white male. Compounding the problems caused by the gaffs was the fact that party leader Smith, who presents herself as a libertarian, refused to condemn her candidates’ controversial viewpoints. Instead she defended their rights to free speech. For her part, she also questioned the science behind global warming during an online chat.
Flanagan said it also didn’t help that old socially conservative policies that had not been revised once Smith was elected leader of the Wildrose party were dragged into the light — the two most often cited were conscience rights and the defunding of abortion.
Flanagan explained that although the party did a lot of things right in the campaign, they didn’t imagine enough of the things that could go wrong. He hastened to add, however, that he had initially joined Smith’s campaign with the expectation that her party would achieve official opposition status at best, which in the end, they did.
“If the polling had stayed low, we’d think that was a great accomplishment,” he said. Following his presentation, Flanagan spent almost half an hour answering questions from the crowd assembled in Room 1220 of the Henry F. Hall Building.
Jacqueline Lemieux, a student in Concordia’s Master of Arts in Public Policy and Public Administration (MPPPA) program, said Flanagan’s talk was a bit too one-sided. “He was talking about the attacks that were perpetrated against them, not really acknowledging that the PCs experienced the same attacks,” she said. “For me it was ultimately unsatisfying, because I didn’t get a feeling of what the election was like. I just saw what it was for his party; in the war room, as he says.”
Nick Metaxas, a second year student in the MPPPA program, said he found Flanagan’s talk informative, but he wasn’t convinced by Flanagan’s explanation of how the party dealt with its own controversial policies, some of which Flanagan admitted he had helped draft at one point in time. “Wouldn’t the new leader go to great lengths to make sure the platform reflects her world view?” Metaxas asked.
Also, Metaxas argued, if some of the Wildrose candidates were controversial, he didn’t see why there was any point in trying to sanitize them, or massage their message. “It seems like you’re being dishonest,” he said. “But Flanagan seems to say it’s a product of the system. You have no choice but to do this.”
The next WSSR event, Decisions: The Road to the White House and Implications of the 2012 American Election, hosted by Thomas J. Scotto, Reader in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, begins this Thursday, May 10.
The workshops take place throughout the month of May, and are available to students and to the public for a fee. Also, for the first time, undergraduate and graduate students can opt to take three of the 12 workshops and earn course credit.
Related links:
• Workshops on Social Science Research
• Political Science Department
• Wildrose party