Braid: UCP goes excessive in fundraising pitch for biggest-spending election ever

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United Conservative Get together members are used to fundraising stunts, however they’ve by no means seen one fairly like this – a “TOP SECRET” memo from the occasion’s marketing campaign supervisor to the chief director.

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It’s spectacular hooey that reveals how this marketing campaign will convey extra spending and assault adverts than any earlier election.

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“I’m going through a critical funding shortfall that should be corrected instantly or our upcoming election marketing campaign (and Alberta’s future) can be in critical jeopardy,” marketing campaign boss Steve Outhouse says to Dustin van Vugt, the UCP’s prime official.

Outhouse pleads, virtually hysterically, for fast injection of $250,000 for the important first 10 days of the election marketing campaign, starting Could 1, or “we would as properly hand the keys of the premiers’s workplace over to Rachel Notley proper now…”

Van Vugt packaged this memo and mailed it out to occasion members along with his personal plea to mark the “enclosed confidential receipt kind and return it to me directly … to let me know you’ve acquired the extremely confidential doc I’ve simply despatched you.”

“I do know I can belief you in sharing this memo,” van Vugt stated, additionally trusting them to share their cash.

As anticipated, it leaked immediately. The letter has been circulating on social media for days, with some folks, together with UCP members, questioning if it was a spoof.

However it’s a real drive for nonetheless more cash.

“That is simply fundraising,” says Dave Prisco, the occasion’s communication director. “Campaigns price so much. Do you watch TV?”

Sure. Assault adverts interrupted by occasional programming.

And but the UCP is by no means wanting funds. In actual fact, each events raised greater than $7 million final yr, with the UCP near $8 million.

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The UCP additionally collected an astonishing whole of $4 million within the first quarter of this yr. The occasion put out a launch trumpeting the numbers at simply the time the allegedly secret pitch was mailed out.

The declare that the UCP marketing campaign will collapse with out one other $250,000 from members is a protracted stretch.

The occasion completed 2022 with money belongings of $2.9 million. That’s the overall earlier than the $4 million infusion within the first three months of 2023.

Many UCP donors hit their $4,300 annual contribution restrict throughout the management battles final yr. That doesn’t appear to cease them from giving once more them this yr.

The NDP, which hasn’t revealed its first-quarter take, experiences to Elections Alberta that it completed 2022 with $5.4 million money readily available, regardless of spending barely greater than it acquired.

Each these events spend enormous quantities on operations and campaigning. The UCP paid out $5.9 million in 2022. The NDP experiences bills of $7.6 million.

They’re all the time fundraising. Outhouse, the UCP marketing campaign supervisor, is simply flashier about it than most. He ran each of Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis’ campaigns for the nationwide management.

“A Nova Scotian dwelling in Ottawa,” in line with his Twitter feed, Outhouse is a campaigner for rent with an internet site pitching his providers.

The NDP marketing campaign supervisor can be Nathan Rotman, who was NDP Chief Rachel Notley’s chief of workers when she was premier. He too lives down east.

The starvation for money is sort of insatiable this time, partly due to a giant change that got here March 31, 2022.

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In 2019 the events all confronted $2 million spending caps throughout the 28-day marketing campaign interval. However new UCP laws raised the restrict to $3.2 million.

Quite than a hard and fast spending restrict, there’s a components – $1.16 occasions the variety of registered electors on the primary day of the month, three months earlier than election day.

There are 2,765,627 voters, says chief electoral officer Glen Resler, that means a per-party cap of $3,208,127.

That applies solely throughout the formal marketing campaign. Each events have already been spending huge for months with no cap in any respect.

There’s a wild mixture of UCP and NDP adverts, authorities adverts (free publicity for the UCP), and partisan pitches from third-party advertisers (which have confronted a $159,000 cap since Jan. 1, with the identical quantity allowed once more throughout the marketing campaign.)

So right here’s a TOP SECRET memo – they’d all like to choose your pockets.

Don Braid’s column seems often within the Herald.

Twitter: @DonBraid