When Liberal Premier Wade MacLauchlan dropped the writ last month sending Islanders to the polls April 23, he took a swipe at Green Leader Peter Bevan-Baker.
He said the future of the province is too important to risk on “uncertain, potentially expensive social experiments led by a career politician.”
Was he setting the tone for a nasty campaign, we wondered? Just days away from the end of the 29-day campaign, the answer is an emphatic No.
In fact, that’s one of the few gratuitous jabs the premier has taken at any of his opponents.
And if it was intended as bait, Bevan-Baker certainly wasn’t biting. He told a reporter the next day, “I’m blessed with a really level constitution – it takes a lot to get me riled up.”
On the evening the writ was dropped, PC Leader Dennis King vowed to spend his campaign talking about what he could do to make the lives of Islanders better and not to engage in “the divisiveness in politics.”
Contrast that with the kickoff to Alberta’s election last month, particularly an early exchange between NDP Premier Rachel Notley and her main rival, UCP Leader Jason Kenney.
Kenney: “If we work hard, stay humble and earn every vote, we will ensure that this deceptive, divisive, debt-quadrupling, tax-hiking, job-killing, accidental socialist government is one-and-done.”
Notley responded: “We will stand up against the UCP’s job-killing, climate-denying, gay-outing, school-cutting, health-privatizing, backward-looking, hope-destroying divine agenda.”
The heated rhetoric and mud-slinging continued for 28 days. It came to an end earlier this week when the UCP won in a landslide.
I’m grateful the Island campaign – aside from a few dustups among leaders and the senseless defacing of candidate’s signs – has steered away from personal attacks, instead offering a civilized look at each party’s position on everything from job creation and taxation to health care and education.
Watching from the sidelines, it’s clear none of the leaders – including Joe Byrne of the NDP – are easily riled. During a televised debate in Summerside and in several other forums and debates on specific issues, there were a few lively exchanges among the leaders but none that crossed into personal attacks or baseless accusations.
In fact, the leaders for the most part seemed downright collegial. In the Summerside debate, King frequently applauded his rivals’ answers as he stressed his government would listen to and collaborate with people.
If a Guardian poll released this week is any indication, collegiality may well be a virtue for all of the leaders. It suggests that under King’s leadership – which he won just weeks before the election call – the PCs have climbed into second place at 32 per cent of decided voters – three behind the Greens and three ahead of the Liberals.
That means a minority government is a distinct possibility, one that would demand more co-operation and collaboration among party leaders to keep a minority government – whatever stripe – from being toppled.
It’s one of the most interesting elections in decades, and Islanders are clearly engaged. More than one-third of eligible voters have cast their ballots in advanced polls.
Congratulations to all 109 candidates for putting their names forward and running clean campaigns. For giving us a clear choice of who we want to govern for the next four years, they’re all winners.
Wayne Young is an instructor in the journalism program at Holland College in Charlottetown.
