King Ralph is gone. He will be sorely missed
The man affectionately christened King Ralph of Alberta is gone.
Former Alberta premier and Calgary mayor Ralph Klein passed away Friday at age 70, suffering from pneumonia and dementia.
His reign has its genesis in the Calgary city council he covered as a CTV television journalist in the 1970s. He eavesdropped outside private meetings. He drank scoops out of inebriated contacts in seedy back-alley bars. His fraternity of sources included cops, accountants, hookers and bikers.
He was a formidable crusading journalist even though, as a hardliving and heavy drinker whom I once retrieved from the Calgary police drunk tank, he seemed headed for a hard fall at a young age.
But Klein was a survivor full of surprises, if not shocks, and never to be underestimated.
He ran and won the Calgary mayoralty in 1980. Far from being a one-term wonder, he went on to win three increasingly lopsided election victories during challenging economic times in the oilpatch.
When he moved into provincial politics, pundits predicted instant doom for a loose cannon chafing against the choke chain of party discipline.
Again, he excelled, first as an environment minister and then as the anti-establishment leader to revive a Progressive Conservative dynasty that badly needed a reset button pushed at the top. Four majority government election wins followed.
Many politicians tried and failed to replicate Klein’s magnetic electoral and personal appeal as a common man with extraordinary abilities. Despite many missteps and chronic tongue-tripping, he was invariably forgiven by voters for being one of them. Being humble and human wasn’t an act.
He bummed cigarettes, drove a Volkswagen Beetle as his last car, preferred pubs to clubs, lived in the same modest bungalow for four decades and demanded to be called Ralph by everyone.
As Klein described it, his political secret was simply figuring out which way the parade was going and get in front of it. And he had the telepathic gift of being able to see the route far in advance. That’s why Klein knew he could swing a blunt axe at deficit spending in the mid-1990s, cutting deep and sparing no one, only to watch his government’s popularity soar ever higher.
The prime minister back then, Jean Chretien, was paying close attention and privately credits Klein for giving him the inspiration to act against federal overspending.
He denounced his political opponents, but respected them enough to listen if they made a legitimate argument. He conspired with chief of staff Rod Love to leak almost everything to grateful reporters, knowing they would become the political IOUs he could cash in when times got tough.
Toward the end of his political life, he seemed bored. He privately complained to me that it was easier to govern in an era of restraint than times of plenty.
But long may the fond memory of Ralph Phillip Klein live on in the minds of Albertans and all Canadians. His King Ralph reign featured a blue-collar force of unique character who kept his campaign promises, admitted his personal mistakes, never strutted a swollen head, and was rewarded with seven massive victories at the civic and provincial ballot box.
In this deteriorating age of chronic flip-flops, endless spin and robotic performances by our politicians, the true tragedy of Ralph Klein’s passing is that we may not see the likes of him again.