Volunteer says critical column blow to ‘Scud Stud’ campaign

CALGARY-A volunteer on former television journalist Arthur Kent’s provincial election team says a newspaper column critical of the Tory candidate had a direct impact on the campaign.

Bart Nicholls told court Wednesday that he was impressed by Kent and believed the former NBC war correspondent would be a good representative for the constituency he was running in.

But the column written by Don Martin dealt a major blow to the campaign, Nicholls testified.

“After the article, several volunteers quit and I would say the reason for it was this article and it became more difficult to recruit,” he said.

Kent, 61, alleges Postmedia, the National Post and Martin defamed him when he was campaigning to win the Calgary Currie seat for the Progressive Conservatives in the 2008 Alberta election. Martin’s piece ran under the headline “Alberta’s ‘Scud Stud’ a ‘Dud’ on Campaign Trail.”

Kent was narrowly defeated.

He acquired the ‘Scud Stud’ nickname while reporting on the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He often went live as Iraqi Scud missiles were launched overhead.

The article painted a picture of a campaign in disarray. It said Kent was not co-operating with the party and that a number of key campaign members were threatening to quit.

The trial is to hear next from Kristine Robidoux, a prominent Calgary lawyer who admitted she leaked damaging information to Martin. She was working on the campaign at the time of the leak and in May 2014 was suspended for four months by the Law Society of Alberta for disclosing confidential information about her client.

The ethics lawyer, who was unnamed in the article, has admitted she forwarded emails that detailed how Kent was not following the advice of his campaign team.

In an agreed statement of facts before the Law Society, Robidoux apologized for her actions and said she felt ‘sick and embarrassed.’ She called the Martin article ‘unbalanced and wholly negative’ which left a misleading and false impression about Kent and the campaign.

She and former party insiders Rod Love and Alan Hallman were identified by Martin in civil proceedings as his confidential sources for his column.

Love died last year while Hallman is to testify later.