Western Standard - May 04, 2023


All quiet on the Western front (AB Elections 2023)

Topics
opposition research NDP UCP
Mentioned
Corey Nigel
MPC Daily Market Update May 3, 2023 Alberta Election weekly wrap-up

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

184.38

Word count

760

Sentence count

49


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the lack of opposition research done by the United Conservative Party of Alberta, and why the party seems to be sitting on a "Fort Knox" of dirt to smear the other party's candidates.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The NDP have been meticulous in opposition research. Anytime anyone has even sniffed around a UCP nomination, the NDP have done a colonoscopy into everything they've ever done, said, whispered, or farted.
00:00:16.300 They're on it. And, you know, they certainly did it last time. And then as soon as, you know, those candidates kind of get defeated, if, you know, say the three of us ran in a nomination and Najinai get defeated and Corey is for some reason the candidate here, then they'll release dirt on the two who lost to kind of smear the party overall.
00:00:37.300 The NDP has been very strong on that. You've seen very little from the UCP on it. There's been a little, I mean, they, you know, they had a, I think about two weeks ago, they did kind of a release on some of the very anti-police and defund the police or police are all wife beaters kind of stuff from various NDP candidates, primarily in Calgary and Edmonton.
00:00:58.360 A little bit of that stuff, but that was all pretty public record already.
00:01:04.460 Let's start with you, Corey. Why do you think the UCP has been so light on opposition research so far? Or do you think they're just kind of sitting on a Fort Knox of dirt right now, waiting until these guys are stuck on the ballot and can't be removed before the cutoff?
00:01:20.020 I don't know. I mean, it could be tactical that they're hanging on until a little later, but usually with that sort of stuff, you want to hit it as it's happening.
00:01:26.100 I mean, as you said, the NDP have been effective. It's kept the UCP on their heels. They're having to apologize almost for half of their nominations.
00:01:33.060 One candidate just the other day pre-apologized for something and didn't say what they were apologizing for, just that they've done something offensive.
00:01:40.280 And we know it's out there. I mean, the NDP has no shortage of some flaky folks attracted to the party as well on the far left that I'm sure have some great quotables out there in social media.
00:01:51.340 They're not nearly as hard to find things on candidates as it used to be 20 years ago. So all we can guess is either UCP hasn't been looking for some reason, didn't look at it as a strategy, or they do have stuff.
00:02:01.880 And as you said, they're sitting on it and waiting for the right time to use it.
00:02:05.240 Nigel, why do you think UCP has been so quiet on the opposition research? Or is it just that the NDP have impeccably vetted candidates who have never done, said or written anything controversial?
00:02:16.700 Impeccably vetted according to NDP principles, I would have to say. I mean, you made reference to some anti-police statements made by, I think it was about three NDP candidates.
00:02:28.140 Three to five.
00:02:28.900 And there was a few more that had sort of signed on to things that you wouldn't want to vote for.
00:02:34.720 But I think that's fine. I mean, that's virtue for them.
00:02:37.800 Well, I did take notice that most of the legacy media took virtually no notice of that.
00:02:45.860 I mean, you know, NDP put out something saying some UCP candidate once said that he doesn't personally like to dress in drag.
00:02:54.260 Well, then all of a sudden that's a scandal. He hates drag queens.
00:02:56.600 But this stuff on the NDP candidates, I saw remarkably little to anything in the legacy media on it.
00:03:03.800 Yeah, I mean, I think you just nailed it there. The media doesn't see what the buzz is.
00:03:09.260 Gosh, we had some stories out of Edmonton, I do believe, within the last couple of months,
00:03:15.740 about NDP candidates who were actively supporting some Christian science church or something.
00:03:26.000 I can't remember exactly where it was, so don't pull me on the Christian science.
00:03:29.520 But at any rate, they were having their drag queen story hour for all the kids.
00:03:35.820 One of the UCP MLA said, well, what's this?
00:03:40.280 He was the one who got attacked for it.
00:03:41.960 So when you're looking around, well, where's the dirt, where's the dirt, what's dirt to the UCP
00:03:47.480 and to the UCP voter, more particularly, passes, it seems, without comment in the NDP
00:03:53.840 and in so much of the legacy media.
00:03:57.520 I don't think they're all that.
00:03:58.960 No.
00:03:59.240 They're all, they're not all over the edge.
00:04:01.460 It's not a monologue.
00:04:02.240 But it's the sort of the common consensus, oh, well, you're used to their own, whatever.