Danielle Smith has gone against all conventional wisdom and political advice. She has ignored polls, pundits and academics that all predicted her political demise and in dismissing all those naysayers, she has found herself elected as Alberta's premier with a majority government at her disposal, albeit a reduced one. .When Smith invoked the late Ralph Klein in referencing his "Miracle on the Prairie", she wasn't drawing an unfair parallel. The similarities between the 1993 general election won by Klein and the 2023 election in Alberta are remarkable. .When Klein took the reins of the Progressive Conservative Party in the early 1990s, the party was in serious trouble. It was polling at 20% against Lawrence Decore's Liberals, and many were declaring the Progressive Conservatives as electorally dead in the water. The elites and chattering classes dismissed Klein as an uneducated bumpkin who stumbled his way into the premiership and who would become little more than a footnote in political history. Voters felt otherwise and gave Ralph Klein a reduced majority government on June 15, 1993. The Alberta establishment was aghast and humbled. .Fast forward to 2022 and we saw the governing UCP polling as low as 22% under the leadership of Jason Kenney. When Kenney was replaced by Danielle Smith, the usual establishment suspects were all but confident this would be the beginning of the end of the UCP's reign in government. There was no way a leader with such a controversial history as Smith could turn around the fortunes of a party in such trouble, right? .Smith proved her detractors wrong and pulled a reduced majority win from what was the most personal and negative provincial election campaign in living memory. While she may have fewer seats than the 1993 PCs did under Klein, she has a larger segment of popular support. Klein garnered 44.5% support in 1993. Smith's UCP took 52.6% of the electorate. Her opponents can no longer claim she hasn't a mandate from Albertans. .If Premier Smith wants to continue down a Klein-like path, she needs to take another of his favourite sayings to heart:.Don't blink!.The election may be behind Smith now, but her opponents are far from gone. .Notley is remaining as leader of the NDP for now which ensures the negative tone of opposition will continue. Legacy media is as biased against Smith as ever and they will pan every move she makes. Just this morning, I listened to a local talk radio station begin its newscast with "Notley's NDP wins largest opposition ever!" Since when is second-place celebrated in a two-party system? They won't give Smith a win in headlines even when she just had a literal win. .Unions, academics and media will all oppose Smith's every move just as they did with Klein. People within Smith's own party will get nervous as opposition to her policies mounts. She will need to ignore her opponents and reassure her allies. Most of all though, she can't blink!.Klein was counselled to back down as he put Alberta's finances back in order. He was told he was moving too far, too fast. He was upsetting the apple cart and he would be punished at the polls. He wouldn't blink and political pundits assured us all he would be punished dearly in the next election. .In the 1997 election, Ralph Klein increased his majority by 11 seats and took 51% of the popular vote. .Smith has a mandate and she needs to pursue it. She can't succumb to the temptation to pull the political reform band aid off slowly through minor, incremental policy changes. For one thing, her opponents will go wild when she makes even minor changes. Secondly, that's how Jason Kenney tried to govern and look how well that turned out. .Albertans are willing to embrace positive political changes even when it comes to the healthcare system and the pension plan. Smith needs to bring about reforms quickly and to offer no quarter to opponents to her work. Changes need to be made in her first two years in power so positive results can be measured before she faces the electorate again. She can't let civil servants, union heads or her own advisors slow-roll her mandate. Hesitation would be her undoing. .Premier Smith isn't showing any indications of being a shrinking violet in office. I don't expect her to tiptoe around with policy. .Smith's biggest mistake ever was to crumble under strong headwinds and lead the disastrous floor crossing from the Wildrose Party to the Prentice Progressive Conservatives in 2014. The pressure got to her and she sought an escape hatch. .Smith has been given a second political life that nobody would have expected after her catastrophic lapse in judgement in 2014. She clearly has learned much since then. Let's hope she has absorbed the most important lesson of all when getting tired of swimming upstream. .Don't blink!
