Don Martin: Ford on cruise control to victory in Ontario while Alberta votes on killing Kenney as UCP leader
Don Martin: Ford on cruise control to victory in Ontario while Alberta votes on killing Kenney as UCP leader
Don Martin: Ford on cruise control to victory in Ontario while Alberta votes on killing Kenney as UCP leader
It’s becoming a make-or-break week for two Conservative premiers as their futures pivot on a pair of defining moments.
One looks set to win a provincial election on June 2. The other appears doomed to suffering considerable personal grief, if not a stunning defeat, from the party he created.
For Ontario’s Doug Ford, the leaders' debate Monday was the last chance for opponents to knock him off his folksy-charm podium. They failed. Another majority Progressive Conservative government beckons.
For Alberta’s Jason Kenney, the best and worst of times are unfolding. He was in Washington on Tuesday delivering a convincing pitch to increase Alberta oil exports before a Senate committee where boosting energy supply is an increasingly easy sell.
Yet he’s also just one day away from learning how many United Conservative Party members want to kill Kenney as leader. Anything less than a two-thirds thumbs-up for Kenney, a very challenging number for him to obtain, will put a mutiny into motion.
All this is to say there’s a mind-reeling divergence of good, bad and ugly political fortunes for these two Conservative clones.
While Kenney deserves credit for completing a mission impossible by reuniting rival right-wing Alberta parties before claiming the leadership and the premier’s job for himself, my true-blue friends (and former Kenney fans) in Alberta just loath the premier now. They perceive him as an arrogant, out-of-touch and generally incompetent leader, this despite the gusher of oil royalties pouring into the treasury amid signs the economy is up-ticking.
Ford, on the other hand, started his first mandate fixated on strange ideological priorities before going rogue with wacky pandemic restrictions and presiding over a troubled vaccine and equipment rollout.
'MOST BLATANT POLITICAL BRIBE I'VE EVER SEEN'
Then, with an election looming, he announced the most blatant political bribe I’ve ever seen. Even though nobody was demanding it, Ford terminated vehicular registration fees and mailed out vote-buying refund cheques for fees already paid.
It was galling waste of fiscal opportunity – and it worked like a charm.
He's still on top of the polls and I’m betting the debate did little to help his rivals dropkick Ford’s popularity down the charts.
So. getting back to the central question, why the fork in their respective political pathways to continuing as a leader?
THIS WILL BE KENNEY'S UNDOING
Kenney is still one of the smartest politicians I know, but his intellectual brilliance, ruthless partisanship and all-about-me mindset will be his undoing.
Believing the premier knows best, Kenney hogs the spotlight on every file, turns a deaf ear to caucus disagreement and bestows every cabinet minister with public invisibility. He is the political antithesis to the chummy premier he idolizes, namely Ralph Klein.
The intellectually lighter Doug Ford, as the debate showed, is more like Klein in that he publicly praises even mediocre ministers (yes, that’s you Education Minister Stephen Lecce), admits to making mistakes and apologizes before changing direction, all the while keeping campaign messages simple and positive.
Unlike Ottawa-bashing Kenney, Ford has learned to play nicely in the political sandbox, praising Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and even saluting the Green party leader this week, a kinder, gentler approach offering some relief to a public fed up with the endless antagonism.
This has raised the prospect of Kenney faltering, if not failing, and Ford, who couldn’t even successfully deliver a new licence plate for Ontario, cruising toward re-election.
The likely explanation for this is not political rocket science.
Politics today (and it’s been that way for a while) is all about personality over policy in a social media age where clever quips and 10-second clips deliver more impact than a fully-costed platform.
If or when future political science students write a Ford-versus-Kenney, success-versus-failure comparative thesis, several conclusions may emerge.
They’ll note that nice guys do indeed finish first, particularly if they admit mistakes and show a self-deprecating sense of humour. Which is why folksy Ford will likely claim victory over plastic Liberal rival Steven Del Duca.
And they’ll learn that nobody likes the smartest kid in the class, particularly when they constantly make sure everyone knows it with an arm-waving look-at-me answer to every question. Which is why the UCP may gleefully kick party founder Jason Kenney to the curb.
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