Bad form for Moe to even consider spring vote

Far more bizarre than Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s decision Thursday morning not to call a spring election was the way he was calmly and inappropriately toying with the notion in the first place.

There was always something exceedingly fishy in how Moe has spent the last month trying to calmly justify something that was absolutely a political choice he was most certainly seriously contemplating.

It wasn’t working because Moe doesn’t do calm and reasoned all that well. His jam is reactionary. Normally, you’d see him as the kind of the guy who was hoarding Costco toilet paper long before it became fashionable.

Remember the Moe Manifesto the day after the Oct. 21 federal election when, in front of the premier’s office, he called for a “new deal”? Remember Moe demanding an immediate recall of Parliament

to legislate striking CN workers back to work? Remember his position on the rail blockades or how he fanned flames that the carbon tax, Bill C-69 and lack of oil pipelines were the ruination of the western/saskatchewan economy?

Shoot first, ask questions later. Or as Moe himself paraphrased on the day he was elected Saskatchewan Party leader: “Just watch me.”

Yet as of Wednesday, he was still contemplating an election call — a day when the World Health Organization deemed COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic, when the price of oil is potentially crashing the world and local economy, when the U.S. is banning most passenger flights from continental Europe and when even the NBA was putting its entire season on hiatus.

“I would like a mandate from the people of the province,” Moe said Wednesday, arguing that his mandate was now up, even though Moe was the one who extended that mandate by seven months by making the choice for an Oct. 26 date. “I would like that mandate sooner rather than later.”

Really? Less than 24 hours before Manitoba and Saskatchewan declared their first presumptive COVID-19 cases, Moe was still spinning the notion that maybe it would be better to have an election to presumably get ahead of the outbreak?

Absolutely no one was saying that. Not even the province’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Saquib Shahab, was suggesting Wednesday that now would be a safer time for an election than October. And let’s be clear that Shahab wasn’t exactly suggesting wrapping the province in bubble wrap.

If anything, Shahab’s notion Wednesday that we could ever run a monthlong election of rallies and hand-shaking by simply extending good social distancing practices of staying home when you are sick and thoroughly washing your hands was always fanciful.

With all due respect to the good doctor, election campaigns are not every day, routine events like grocery shopping where you “maybe get someone else to do the groceries.” (Although maybe it would be good if you could thump the melonheads who come to your door asking for your vote to see which ones were squishy.)

But calling or not calling an election isn’t Shahab’s call — it is Moe’s.

And it would have been the height of irresponsibility to have called a spring election campaign right after Wednesday’s budget that will be based on oil prices double today’s US$30 a barrel price.

So why was Moe even contemplating this notion? Well, it’s always all about winning in politics, and, in this case, winning big.

For weeks now, there have been rumours of a Sask. Party poll suggesting the NDP would be virtually wiped out by a snap spring election.

This is also reality in politics. There is no mercy. Now was the opportunity for Moe to go full Cobra Kai and sweep Ryan Meili’s leg.

However, open windows are often quickly closed. Any more recent polls would surely now be telling the Sask. Party that holding an election during a pandemic would have been a very bad look.

COVID-19’S first Saskatchewan casualty was political opportunism.

Mandryk is political columnist for the Regina Leader-post and Saskatoon Starphoenix.