Larkin: ‘I’m not going to apologize’

Opinion

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This article was published 06/10/2023 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Marni Larkin would like you to know that she’s not sorry.

“No, I’m not going to apologize,” the co-chair of the Progressive Conservatives’ 2023 re-election campaign, told the Free Press in an exclusive interview.

“It was the campaign we needed to run.”

Although it may have been viewed internally as a necessary evil, the dark tones the Tories adopted — and the even darker forces they appeared to be courting — will be hotly debated for many years in this province.

In an unofficial campaign post-mortem three days after the votes were counted, Larkin quickly confirmed that, starting the week before the official writ period began Sept. 5, the campaign executed a hard right turn in both substance and tone.

There was the “parental rights” pledge, which critics labelled a call to arms for social conservatives and anti-LGBTTQ+ forces. Then came the “stand firm” ads that promised a re-elected Tory government would not fund the “dangerous landfill dig” to look for the remains of two Indigenous women police were deposited there after being slain by a serial killer. That messaging was by labelled by critics and Indigenous leaders as racist.

The easy armchair-quarterback analysis suggests the two planks sunk the chances of PC candidates in Winnipeg, while shoring up Tory seats in rural constituencies. Larkin suggested that was pretty much what she had planned.

She said the party faced an existential threat in this election and she was prepared to do whatever it took to ensure the Tories were not stuck in opposition for the better part of two decades, as happened following its crushing defeat in the 1999 election.

Larkin said the polling data and other intel the party had going into the campaign suggested that even with a competent, middle-of-the road campaign, the PCs would lose a huge number of rural constituencies, with no promise that they would hold on to any of their most-vulnerable Winnipeg seats.

She pointed to the overall seat total (22) and wins in Swan River, Interlake-Gimli, Selkirk, and Dawson Trail — a constituency with both urban and rural polls — as evidence the strategy worked.

“A year ago, it looked like we were only going to win 12 seats. We had to build a campaign to avoid that kind of result. With over 20 seats now, we will be able to raise money.”–Marni Larkin

“A year ago, it looked like we were only going to win 12 seats. We had to build a campaign to avoid that kind of result. With over 20 seats now, we will be able to raise money,” she said.

”We’ll have a full, robust leadership race (to replace Heather Stefanson who, in her concession speech, announced her intention to resign the leadership). And in four years, when the next election comes around, who knows?”

Larkin insisted that while there were other people involved in discussions around strategy, she is chiefly responsible for the campaign. In an odd way, her willingness to accept blame is, if nothing else, a bit refreshing, given that there are significantly more Tories trying to evade responsibility for the campaign than to accept it.

Stefanson said the day before the election that she doesn’t “get into the weeds of deciding what goes into our advertising.” Co-chair Candice Bergen criticized the campaign for trying to portray the party and its leader as “angry.” She then claimed no responsibility for the tone of the campaign, insisting her role was largely “honorary.”

Although none of them has said much since the results were known, there were others on the campaign steering committee: Jason Stefanson, Heather’s husband and longtime Tory communicator Barb Biggar.

For what it’s worth, party sources confirmed that everyone else in the room — including Stefanson and Bergen — had equal input on the messaging and tone.

Flawed logic

Larkin’s courage in stepping forward does not, however, completely resolve some of the flawed logic in her arguments, including her attempt to find nuance in the parental rights and landfill positions.

She claimed parental rights was nothing more than a call for Manitobans with school-age children to consult on the future of public education. And the landfill stand was simply an attempt to demonstrate the fact that Stefanson, who had extremely low approval ratings, could make a difficult decision and stick to it.

If those were the nuances the campaign tried to impart to the electorate, the final results suggest Larkin and others were not successful.

More importantly, other prominent Tories, particularly those at the candidate level, have been more blunt in suggesting that those two planks — arguably the most prominent positions the party took throughout the campaign — were clearly designed to tap into some sort of mystical silent constituency of far-right voters that, for the most part, did not materialize.

Steinbach MLA Kelvin Goertzen, who served as interim premier immediately after Brian Pallister resigned in September 2021, conceded he had concerns with messaging, and expressed them internally during the campaign. However, the most pointed criticism has come from former cabinet minister and Riel MLA Rochelle Squires, a progressive within the caucus who was beaten soundly in her riding.

In an interview on the Niigaan and the Lone Ranger podcast, Squires said the campaign “pivoted” to the far-right of the political spectrum, embracing policies that were “misguided at best, and atrocious at worst,” without advance warning. It was, she said, a stark contrast to the approach taken in the 2016 and 2019 elections — which the Tories won with huge majorities — where candidates were given a chance to preview campaign messaging and ads.

“Everybody who was part of that Progressive Conservative campaign needs to do some soul searching and look themselves in the mirror and say, ‘What happened, and what role did I play in it?” Squires said.

She and many others in the party believe the Tories could have retained more seats in Winnipeg — and done less harm to the party’s brand — if they had adopted a campaign tone that was consistent with their spring budget.

Comments like that undermine the foundation of Larkin’s thesis and suggest that when it was all said and done, the campaign succeeded only in cutting off its nose to save its face.

The NDP won all but three of the 32 seats in Winnipeg, but several of those steals were real squeakers. The Tories lost McPhillips by 333 votes, Waverley by 119 votes and Lagimodière by just 103 votes. Conventional wisdom strongly suggests they were winnable if the PCs ran a more moderate campaign.

Some of the questions surrounding who is culpable for the campaign debacle will remain for some time. Even so, it seems clear the campaign team will eventually have its day of reckoning with party members.

Brent Pooles, the PC party president, confirmed the 2023 campaign was unusual in many respects. Typically, he said, campaign advertising and messaging would be previewed for the party executive and candidates, to give them time to prepare for conversations with prospective voters. Fundraisers, as well, need to know the broad strokes of messaging so they know how to manage donors.

Less information

In this campaign, Pooles said, there were fewer people in the know and less information to go around.

“Nobody on the executive or board had any input into the campaign team or the campaign messaging. None of us had any idea really where the campaign was going,” he said.

Right now, Pooles said the party is focused on establishing a “longer leadership campaign, and a fairer leadership campaign.”

However, just as important will be a future sit-down between the core of the campaign team and the executive to hear first-hand about how and why the campaign unfolded as it did.

“We all, at some point, would like to have a session… where we can ask some questions and figure out why certain decisions were made and what data was available to support those decisions.”

As for Larkin, she claims to have no concerns about her future, or the future of the party.

“You never appreciate campaigns that lose until about four years later when you’re getting ready for the next election,” she said.

“If we have a chance in four years, I think history will treat this campaign fairly.”

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.