While the weeks leading up to her debate with Rachel Notley were embarrassing for Smith, most polls showed UCP gains from May 18 onward
, the only matchup of the election campaign with the former NDP premier who had polled higher than Ms. Smith for months. The United Conservative Party Leader needed to show voters that she wasn’t the unpredictable politician her opponents, and her past, suggested.
To understand why May 18 was important, you need to go back to the beginning of the month. The UCP argues it had a good first week campaigning. It gained momentum from a Calgary arena deal – technically made before the writs were issued but deeply political – which was followed by an announcement on the first day of the official campaign to cut personal income taxes.
On Tuesday, May 16, Ms. Smith and her team sat in a conference room at the Heritage Inn in Brooks contemplating how off-track their campaign was. They were in the Southern Alberta city because Ms. Smith had agreed to two debates in her riding, Brooks-Medicine Hat, on the two evenings immediately before the debate with Ms. Notley.
Steve Outhouse, the UCP’s campaign manager from Ontario – who ran leadership campaigns for federal Conservative Leslyn Lewis – said this gave the team the proof they needed to show voters that they should be nervous about the NDP’s fiscal chops. The day of the leaders’ debate started rough for the UCP. The Ethics Commissioner released a 17-page report that concluded that Ms. Smith, as Premier, tried to influence the Minister of Justice in a way that would benefit a street preacher charged for his role at the border blockade near Coutts, in early 2022. But various parts of the controversy had been in the news for months. Despite the new details in the report, it felt like an old story for many voters.
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