Article content

At the start of this campaign, I suggested the provincial election was shaping up to be a tug of war between Albertans’ fury over the economy and their fears about unscrupulous leadership.

In many ways, I was hoping to be proven wrong.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Keith Gerein: Foul campaign filled with fear and fury finally coming to an end Back to video

While fear and anger are powerful motivators, they are hardly ideal emotions on which to cast a ballot. Naively, I hoped a thread of inspiration would come along that could change the narrative.

Instead, Albertans are back where we started, facing that same undesirable conundrum. Four long weeks of a foul campaign has seemingly done little except to leave lasting scars on our politics and ensure much of the province remains furious no matter who wins.

The last provincial election I covered was in 2012, the infamous “lake of fire” race when the Wildrose party was tripped up because of a couple of problem candidates.

For comparison, in this race, there have been well over a dozen rank revelations about various candidates, not to mention more than a half-dozen from nominees and other partisans that came to light before the writ was dropped.