If the Sask. Party emerges with another solid majority on Monday night, it probably won’t be on the strength of the October 2024 campaign it ran.
Perhaps the fabled and formidable Saskatchewan Party election machine is only now kicking in with an awesome E-Day get-out-the-vote ground game that gives them them another huge majority.
Maybe the Sask. Party alchemists behind the scenes — those who live by the dark arts of algorithms, ruthlessly framed to concoct issues to motivate an increasingly outraged electorate — may yet prove they still know what they’re doing.
After all, the NDP have been underestimating the Sask. Party’s skills since the 1999 election, when they were also trailing in the polls.
But it sure doesn’t seem the Sask. Party is running the kind of stellar campaign for which it’s famous. If the Sask. Party emerges with another solid majority on Monday night, it probably won’t be on the strength of the October 2024 campaign it ran.
This is in no way to suggest that Carla Beck’s NDP campaign has been anything close to perfection.
And then there’s the NDP’s ongoing relatability problem: Beck’s urban-oriented, social-issue NDP still struggled to provide rural voters in particular with a solid case as to why their plan would be better.
It still seems as if the Saskatchewan NDP’s biggest problems won’t be overcome in a 27-day campaign.
Nevertheless, there were days when Beck and the NDP looked like the seasoned campaigners and Moe and the Sask. Party seemed the novices.
Beck was constantly on the move and seemingly everywhere — even in a few rural seats where recent NDP leaders dared not tread.
She was usually surrounded by enthusiastic candidates, supporters, her lieutenants from the NDP caucus or validators with stories to tell. And each day there was a B or C campaign event involving one of those lieutenants with pointed criticisms.
By contrast, Moe spent most of the campaign as a lonely one-man show, with few events involving senior ministers and even fewer validators. Really, where were the Jeremys — Harrison and Cockrill?
The announcement of the change room policy for schools looked more like a contrived attack in conjunction with an alt-right news website than a response to any legitimate issue. If anything, Moe calling this his new “No. 1 priority” likely angered more voters than it attracted.
All too often, this Sask. Party campaign has seemed to go out of its way to avoid media scrutiny — or at least, that’s what it looks like when you release your platform with questionable numbers on the Saturday of a long weekend.
A governing party running on its record wound up taking far too many hits for that record. It was hard for Moe to keep on message.
Even the Sask. Party’s attempt to run hard against the connections between the Saskatchewan NDP and their federal counterparts pretty much morphed into a campaign against the record of a long-ago NDP government that was first elected 33 years ago and was last in power 17 years ago.
It may not matter, given the Sask. Party’s bedrock support — especially in rural ridings. But it hasn’t been the smoothly run Sask. Party campaign we’ve come to expect.
Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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