Email hints Liberals feel campaign is in trouble

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This article was published 05/04/2016 (3641 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Liberal staffer’s very public attempt to circle the party’s wagons against perceived unfair media coverage could damage an already wounded campaign.

Liberal communications director Mike Brown’s email Tuesday afternoon to party candidates — which also found its way into media inboxes — urged caution in dealing with CBC, which he said was “actively seeking out negative comments” about Leader Rana Bokhari.

“Please do not be part of that story,” Brown cautioned party hopefuls. “If we learned anything from 2011 it’s that abandoning the leader leads to poor showings on election day for everyone.”

The email soon became a sensation on Twitter, retweeted and commented upon by pundits well beyond Manitoba’s borders.

While it appeared to be addressed only to Liberals, Brown denied in an interview that it was sent to journalists by mistake.

Claims email was meant for media

“Originally it was talked about as an internal email, but then we decided we’d push it out to everybody,” he said.

Bokhari, who had no public events on Tuesday, endorsed the email’s contents, he said. “She certainly felt that the message needed to be sent,” he added.

The Liberal campaign has taken several hits in recent days. First, it was unable to field a full slate of candidates, then its fiscal plan for the province was panned and its candidate in Brandon West said Manitoba had too many hospitals

On Monday, Bokhari announced she had punted Elmwood candidate Kurt Berger after his former common-law wife stepped forward alleging a pattern of abuse.

And the Free Press revealed another candidate, Garry Gurke (Dauphin), is the subject of a protection order from his family.

The party’s missteps have commentators predicting that Liberal popularity, pegged as high as 29 per cent among decided voters in a December poll, may be about to plunge.

Brown stopped short of saying Tuesday that the media were on a witch hunt; rather, he termed it a “hunt for negativity.” He accused a CBC reporter of feigning a request to interview a candidate for a constituency profile only to try to ask about Bokhari’s performance.

‘They’ve only covered scandals’

“We feel, at this point, that CBC is actively seeking to make news, as opposed to covering news. For a couple of weeks now, they haven’t covered any of our actual announcements. They’ve only covered the scandals,” he charged.

Asked for comment, Cecil Rosner, managing editor of CBC Manitoba, said, “Our journalists do responsible work in a fair and balanced fashion, as we do in every election.”

The Free Press was also singled out for criticism by the Liberals. Brown accused a reporter of repeated editorializing in news stories and has said the party will not respond to questions posed by him anymore.

Paul Thomas, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, said he doesn’t think the Liberal campaign can recover from the recent string of bad news days.

Lashing out at the media won’t help, he said.

“One of the rules of thumb is don’t pick a fight with the media, because they get the last word — and especially not when you are in a downward spiral and it looks like sour grapes and complaining,” Thomas said.

“You can’t complain about them when they are describing what went on, and it is so universally the same themes about the campaign and the leader that it is not (like there is) any one media outlet trying to torpedo the Liberals.”

Tough tests to come

Thomas said Bokhari faces some tough tests in the coming days. There is a party leader’s debate in Brandon on Thursday and two more next week, including a televised debate on Tuesday. She speaks to the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce Wednesday morning.

In the 2011 election, some high-profile Liberals, despairing the state of their election campaign, urged party members to support certain NDP candidates, such as Theresa Oswald in Seine River and Sharon Blady in Kirkfield Park.

The Liberals wound up with only 7.5 per cent of the popular vote five years ago.

Prominent Liberal Bob Axworthy said the Liberals have “missed an opportunity” to make big gains in this election, noting that the party was flying high in public opinion polls and riding the momentum from the federal election.

Axworthy, a former Liberal leadership hopeful and provincial candidate, said Liberal policies have lacked coherence and sometimes missed the mark.

“How do you say you want to privatize the liquor commission, and two weeks later you want to get into the grocery business? Manitobans don’t understand that. I don’t understand that,” he said, referring to an announcement last week that an elected Liberal government would spend $20 million in tax dollars to launch a downtown grocery store.

“I make no apologies (for being critical of the Liberal campaign). I’m very saddened by the course of events,” he said in an interview.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca