MEDICINE HAT, Alta. – Cathy Smith is the kind of prairie voter and political worker the Progressive Conservative party could rely on once, but has lost.
She was a Tory in anti-Tory country when she lived in western Quebec in the 1970s, then worked for a series of Conservative candidates once she moved to Medicine Hat more than 20 years ago.
By 1997, she was wavering but still worked for the Conservative candidate in Medicine Hat.
This year, she is campaign manager for Canadian Alliance candidate Monte Solberg, whose re-election seems like a coronation.
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Solberg is a two-term high profile MP who last week flew to Ottawa for a few days in the middle of the campaign to be part of the Alliance transition team making plans in case the CA wins the Nov. 27 election.
“I just thought the Conservatives had lost touch,” Smith said in the Solberg campaign offices in mid-November. “When (Joe) Clark won the leadership again, I just gave up on them. They don’t speak to us any more.”
In this southeastern Alberta riding, the more than 3,000 members of the Alliance total close to 10 percent of the number of voters expected to cast ballots on Nov. 27.
“I think we will do well,” Smith said.
A few hours’ drive west, Joe Clark is fighting for his political life in a downtown Calgary riding won in the past two elections by the Reform party. Clark is running against Alliance incumbent Eric Lowther.
Last week, Clark campaign official Steven Clark said that despite the gap in support that existed when the campaign began and the fact that Clark has had just a few days to spend in the riding because of his national duties as Conservative leader, the Tories are winning.
“Joe is coming home,” he said, referring to the fact that he represented Alberta ridings for 21 years before 1993 and had an office for his post-1993 consulting business in Calgary. “And people want a moderate voice to represent them in Parliament.”
Lowther campaign officials scoff at the idea that Clark is ahead, but the party is worried enough about the Calgary Centre race that workers and money are flowing into the constituency from other areas.
“Some of my people have come to me and said they’re not working here or giving here, they’re going to Eric’s seat and I think that’s OK,” said Macleod CA candidate and incumbent Grant Hill as he contemplated an easy re-election in his rural-urban riding south of Calgary. “It is important to us that we win that riding and I’m sure we will.”
In the 1993 election, the Conservative party that once held Western Canada as its secure base was shut out in the region. Last time, Brandon’s Rick Borotsik was the only Conservative elected west of Ontario.
Election public opinion polls suggest the party is running a distant fourth across the West. Election in Calgary Centre is crucial to Clark’s dream of leading a Tory revival.
Ten hours’ drive northeast of Clark’s fight to re-enter Parliament, Prince Albert Conservative candidate David Orchard is telling voters he has the answer to how the Tories can become relevant again.
Orchard, a Borden, Sask., farmer, is a nationally known Canadian nationalist and anti-free trade campaigner. He is running in the seat held by former Tory prime minister John Diefenbaker and is telling voters he is running to help reform the Conservative party into what it was in Diefenbaker’s day – a nationalistic, anti-American vehicle.
It would mean renouncing the record of the party’s past 16 years and its current platform in favor of freer trade.
“I am the only farmer in this race,” Orchard told voters repeatedly at a craft fair in Paddockwood, Sask., Nov. 12. “I am in this race to represent a Conservative party which is opposed to the Alliance agenda.”
Orchard, who came second in the Conservative leadership race in 1998 and likely would run again if Clark is defeated and resigns, said in an interview it is his goal to remake the Conservative party into the nationalist vehicle it has been through most of Canada’s history.
In his committee room, he has posted endorsements from country music icon Stomping Tom Connors and Conservative propagandist Dalton Cam-10-P. A letter from former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau approving his nationalist view of Canadian history is part of the collection.
At the craft fair, a few voters accost him for such past Tory policies as the goods and services tax, free trade and the general existence of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who has appeared to support Clark in this election.
Orchard made a name fighting Mulroney’s free trade and constitutional proposals. Now, he is running for his party.
“I never thought I’d have to have Mulroney on my shoulder,” he ruefully told one voter.
