Local flavour to election seems to have disappeared

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on April 5, 2019.

Is it possible that we can mark 2019 as the expiry date of local politics?

There are, of course, local candidates, local campaign offices, local people knocking on local doors.

And, it must be considered that the current provincial election is particularly being posed by all parties as one involving “big issues.”

But there is a distinct lack of local issues being discussed by voters or candidates.

This time out, there’s no call to build a hospital or overpass, no promises that exclusively benefit Medicine Hat, no connection being drawn to how answering “big” questions affect the landscape here.

Sure, everyone deals with the carbon levy, most people have some financial connection to activity in the oil patch, or have kids in school, or depends on health care, or knows at least one person who is gay.

People say they want candidates to knock on their doors, but is that an honest answer in this age of social media? Or with leader-driven campaigns that major parties in the province are waging?

At present, Alberta voters will decide on April 16 between Jason Kenney, who’s been a one-man band for two years of rallying Alberta’s conservative sects, and Rachel Notley, whose appeal carried the New Democrats from perennial “also ran” status to majority government in 2015.

That involved beating Jim Prentice, who was the centrepiece, honest-to-goodness heavyweight hope of rebuilding the Progressive Conservative Party.

And it came four years after Wildrose leader Danielle Smith’s charisma and new-style conservative campaign team put a considerable dent in the PC organization machine that was billed as nearly unstoppable in a traditional campaign.

After that, Progressive Conservatives came to the clear conclusion that 100 per cent of the fault lay with Alison Redford, plain and simple.

In short, leaders matter.

Perhaps it was always this way. People vote for platforms, big visions, etc. Single-issue candidates are never successful, and at least some voters always consider the implications of having a MLA that’s either in or out of government.

But it’s been happening for a while that politicians have had a hard time linking local lives to provincial policy. That leaves voters feeling either more disaffected or more certain in their existing attitudes.

This week’s Chamber of Commerce debate provided some interesting examples.

On the question of infrastructure and education, there was a time when a candidate would have mentioned his party built two new schools and modernized three more in town during the recent term.

Instead time was spent discussing curriculum review, where the other party is seen as vulnerable.

Likewise, with the local unemployment rate hovering at pre-recession levels and the city developing a labour attraction policy, another candidate cites Calgary office vacancy rates as signal of economic woe.

Aside from a passing mention of Highway No. 3 twinning, and plumbing the depths of the supervised consumption site debate, the average voter is left to connect dots to their daily lives.

A touchstone in the traditional media is to localize national stories and nationalize local stories, and the same goes for the province.

But, it’s increasingly hard to get local voices on issues, or local candidates to explain.

For example, on the minimum wage, aside from a few usual voices, it’s hard to get a business owner’s opinion for fear they’ll be branded as bad employers.

Likewise, it’s impossible to get a low wage earner to talk about the issue for obvious reasons.

Voters stick to their own circles, more often than not in closed social media loops.

And candidates are sticking to the party lines, seemingly to the detriment of improving discourse, understanding and inclusion in today’s political discourse.

That goal, every party’s talking-points memo seems to say, is something on which we can all agree.