WEEK 1 WRAPPED

Just five days into this election campaign, and I think most observers can agree – this will be one exciting election, which is a bit of an anomaly in Alberta politics. Here’s a look back at what happened this week:

DAY 1 

The writ drops and candidates were off running, most kicking off their campaigns both in Edmonton and then in Calgary. A pretty standard kick-off-until the polls came out at the end of the day. An Ipsos Reid poll provided exclusively to Global showed the Wildrose and PCs are literally neck and neck – 38% support for each party among decided voters. All of a sudden, it felt like we had a real race on our hands.

Probably the tamest day of the campaign – lots of photo ops (kids as props, seniors as props, coffee as a prop – you get the idea). Redford made a speech at the Calgary Chamber of Commerce – as part of a longer comment, she said: “we have the opportunity to make some really wise and long term decisions that will change the character of our province.” Didn’t sound like anything scandalous at the time…until…

Danielle Smith started the day on the attack – in front of a surprised group of reporters, she said – based on the above comment – “I think Ms. Redford doesn’t like Alberta all that much.” The comment seemed to somewhat backfire on Smith – Redford responded by saying it’s ‘ridiculous’ to say that she doesn’t like Alberta. I think Smith’s remarks point to the narrative for this election – two competing visions of what Alberta is/can be. The problem with having a ballot question on that though, is that it’s a pretty abstract concept. It might be hard for voters to go to the polls thinking about a ‘vision’ for a province vs. who they trust to fix health care. It will be interesting to see if the ‘old vs new’ Alberta dialogue continues.  

This was a biggie. Redford kicked off the day with a surprising announcement – she would be forcing all MLAs on the now-infamous no-meet committee to pay back every cent they’d earned on the committee, or they wouldn’t have a spot in the PC caucus. Wowza. Redford had changed her mind multiple times on this issue – first, she said it was up to each MLA to decide for themselves, then criticized some opposition MLAs for paying money they had earned back (called it a “political stunt”) and then last week, the PC caucus decided to pay back ‘some’ of the money – ie money they’d earned from the committee since Redford became Premier. Redford’s flip-flop is a no-brainer – I’ve never seen people more passionate about a political story than this one. I ended up doing ‘streeters’ about this story on Thursday – basically asking people on the street what they thought about it, and I was shocked by the response. Every single person I spoke with knew about the story. This is a rarity in politics – normally about two-thirds of the people I approach about political stories aren’t interested…this story is a different beast. The big question now is whether Redford’s about-face came in time – or too late. 

After the excitement yesterday, Friday was a bit calmer. A lot of photo ops, more babies, more seniors…and more over-arching sentiment that this actually is a race. For a look back at the week – check out the first installment of Global’s weekly election panel with Graham Thomson and Joan Crockatt. 

http://www.globaltvedmonton.com/video/election+panel/video.html?v=2217263449&p=1&s=dd#video 

So – what do you think of this election so far? Let me know!

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Email – vassy.kapelos@globalnews.ca