Tuesday’s election win that gave Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party a majority government holds many lessons for those who engage in the politics of fear and smear. Not only does it not always work, it can backfire big time.

The Alberta NDP ran a disgraceful, cynical campaign of attempted character assassination against United Conservative Party candidates who were called every name in the book, including white supremacists.

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More than 70 per cent of eligible Alberta voters cast a ballot in this election; 55.2 per cent of them voted for the UCP and just 32 per cent for Rachel Notley’s NDP — making her government the first in the province’s 114-year history to govern for a single term. Of the 87 seats up for grabs, the UCP nabbed 63 and the NDP 24, according to unofficial results.

Besides the outcome of the election that stands as a repudiation of Notley’s campaign strategy, perhaps the best example of how vilifying one’s opponent can boomerang comes from what happened to UCP candidate Kaycee Madu, who won in the riding of Edmonton-South West against the NDP’s John Archer. In 2015, that seat was won by a different NDP candidate with 53 per cent of the vote.

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Madu was defamed as a white supremacist sympathizer by Archer in a Press Progress story after Madu posted a photo of himself on his Facebook page with a campaign sign on a lawn that said “StopNotley.com,” which had a small logo from The Rebel media organization in the right top corner.

Madu’s rival tweeted before the April 1 Press Progress story appeared, calling on Madu to “apologize” for promoting The Rebel.

“My opponent is praising The Rebel,” Archer tweeted. “This is not who we are, Alberta. I call on my opponent (Madu) to apologize.”

The absurdity of that criticism is that Madu is a Nigerian-born black man. Clearly, the constituents of that riding weren’t buying the cynical hate-mongering by the NDP.

Madu did not respond to Press Progress, which is linked to the U.S.-funded Tar Sands Campaign to landlock Alberta oil. Instead, Madu, who has a law degree from the University of Lagos, wrote on his Facebook page: “Our focus remains ensuring that we rebuild our economy. We have zero interest in divisive and identity politics and politics of personal attacks and destruction, which are the focus of the NDP because they cannot afford to campaign on their record of economic failures.”

Short, sweet and factual.

Like Madu said, Notley and her NDP government MLAs couldn’t run on their disastrous economic record and destructive policies that have chased away so much investor confidence, jobs and capital, so they tried and failed to run on Kenney’s past going back more than 30 years.

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Hopefully, the lesson of how not to run an election campaign will finally start sinking in across Canada.

During last spring’s Ontario election, then-Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne ran her entire campaign attacking Doug Ford, saying he was a radical right-winger who would destroy every social program Ontarians held dear.

She and her party were decimated — even losing official party status — with Ford being swept to power on June 7, 2018. Her political record was not unlike Notley’s — with policies that cost citizens dearly and wracking up huge deficits and debt.

Now, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — whose popularity has plummeted in the polls after the SNC-Lavalin scandal showed that he has little regard for the rule of law and that he bullies women in his cabinet and caucus if they don’t do his bidding — is trying to do the same thing to Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer.

Last week, Trudeau and his House leader attacked Scheer by insinuating he sympathizes with white supremacists . Not even Trudeau can truly believe Scheer is a white supremacist. It’s farcical.

Back in February, Scheer spoke to the yellow vest convoy that drove across the country in support of Alberta’s oil and gas industry. Heck, I wrote about that convoy in glowing terms before I knew that a contingent of that group espouses anti-immigrant views.

Scheer responded to Trudeau’s attacks, saying: “I have always 100 per cent denounced white supremacy and racism and anyone who promotes those hateful ideologies. And this is what is so disgusting about this. They are using the very real threat of hatred and racism in this country to cover up their corruption scandal,” Scheer said of Trudeau and his party.

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“That is disgusting and he should answer for it.”

Here’s hoping Trudeau answers for it the same way Wynne and Notley have, by being trounced in a general election.

“For lack of a better term, the NDP campaign was a 28-day manure spreader,” said Marc Henry, the president of ThinkHQ Public Affairs, whose polls forecast a UCP majority throughout the campaign.

“I kept expecting at some point in the campaign for the NDP to pivot off of the negativity. I found it ironic that the premier’s concession speech was the highlight of her campaign. If she would have taken that tone and content at the beginning of the campaign, she might have had a very different result,” said Henry.