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Tories confident as parties campaign on 'pocketbook issues'
Deborah Nobes, CBC News Online | April 4 Listen  to CBC radio's Jacques Poitras' humourous take on Tory Leader Bernard Lord's personal popularity.
Premier Bernard Lord is the picture of confidence as he steps into an election campaign that many believe will paint the New Brunswick countryside Tory blue.  The
37-year-old leader is busy making the rounds at nominating conventions,
getting his ducks in a row in time for a spring vote. Speaking in
community halls festooned with bunches of blue and white balloons
and bouquets of dyed blue carnations, Lord is reassuring the party
faithful that his majority government’s last four years in
office will be enough to convince the public to give the Progressive
Conservatives a second term.“We have provided strong leadership and have strong results, and we have a stronger future because of that,” Lord told a crowded nominating meeting in Albert County recently, where encumbent MLA Wayne Steeves won the nod. “It is now up to us to see what we have before us.” Lord swept into office in a surprise win over the Liberals in 1999. It was a come-from-behind victory with a large mandate. Progressive Conservative candidates won 44 of 55 seats, many in ridings the Tories hadn’t counted on. It wasn’t so much that New Brunswickers liked the young, virtually unknown lawyer-turned-leader, more that voters wanted to be done with a three-term Liberal government many believed had become arrogant with power. And while most agree the Progressive Conservatives have political fortune at their feet, their success may have more to do with a struggling opposition and this province’s political history than their record in government. The Tories are facing novice Liberal Leader Shawn Graham, who at 35, was elected to the top party job less than a year ago. Unhelpful to the party is the fact that three Liberal seats went Tory in mid-term by-elections, bucking conventional political wisdom and increasing the government majority. As for political history, New Brunswick voters are a patient lot, and like to give young premiers more than one chance to prove their mettle. Premiers Louis Robichaud, Richard Hatfield and Frank McKenna were all in their 30s when they gained power and each won successive majority governments. There is a saying in political circles in New Brunswick that voters like to get their premiers young, and keep them in power a long time. The Liberals are focusing their campaign on picking up extra seats in ridings where hospitals have closed and doctors moved away, where the Tories are divided, or where individual government MLAs have failed to deliver on the demands of their constituents. Graham is working hard to find dents in the Tory armour, and believe issues such as the government’s attempt to deregulate NB Power, and it’s failure to deal effectively with unusually high auto insurance premiums will resonate with voters. “This [auto insurance] will be the defining issue in the next campaign,” Graham says. “We have been working exceptionally hard on initiatives to address the gouging that has been going on for the last 22 months.” As for the New Democrats, their dynamic leader Elizabeth Weir has been the lone voice of the middle left in the legislature since she was elected in 1991. She wins respect from members on all sides of the house for her tireless battles on behalf of workers, the poor and disenfranchised and the environment, is popular with the public but has been unsuccessful in helping to elect fellow MLAs. This campaign, she’ll focus on what she calls “pocketbook issues,” including increases to fuel taxes, skyrocketing auto insurance and the rising cost of prescription drugs for seniors. She says the large majority governments both the Liberals and Tories have won in recent decades are bad for democracy and wants voters to finally give her candidates a chance to prove their worth. “I want us to restore some kind of sanity in the legislature,” she says.  Lord’s
slogan in 1999 was simply, "time for a change" and his
platform consisted of populist small ‘c’ Conservative
values; tax cuts, controlled spending in health care and education,
and a rash promise to remove tolls from a planned highway project
stretching from Moncton to Fredericton. This time, the Lord Tories
are campaigning on constancy and leadership, chatting up their steady
increases to health and education spending and the number of jobs
created in New Brunswick in the last four years.There are no overarching issues in this campaign, so some believe this election may be about who is the better leader. “The difficulty for the Liberals is that there is nothing much for them to hurt the government on,' says University of New Brunswick political scientist Richard Sigurdson. “I don’t think they [Progressive Conservatives] have to be very aggressive or set very high benchmarks for themselves this time. If New Brunswick is like everywhere else, they’ll probably sense some security concerns and will sell themselves as tried and trusted, and low risk. Of course, Bernard Lord looks like an old man of politics compared with Shawn Graham.” Lord is likely hoping the voters of New Brunswick will agree with that assessment, and give his party a second chance.
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