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Drayton Valley — A sales woman at a Drayton Valley auction says she’ll vote UCP because she always voted conservative. An oil services manager calls the UCP the lesser of two evils. Two women eating lunch at the bakery lower their voices, glance around and say they actually agree with the comments local candidate Mark Smith made about homosexuality.

Scandal after scandal has plagued the UCP campaign but has it been enough to shake leader Jason Kenney’s base in the rural heartland?

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Thirty-five of Alberta’s ridings are rural and a party needs 44 of 87 seats to form a majority government. Heading into the last week of the campaign I went to Drayton Valley, part of a rural riding with a candidate now at the centre of controversy. It’s also among the hardest hit from the oil and gas decline.

Here, the scandals have so far only caused a ripple.

Smith got in trouble over a homophobic statement in a 2013 sermon, plus position papers he helped author after being elected as a Wildrose MLA in 2015. In the sermon at Calvary Baptist Church, he suggested the love of LGBTQ people is not “good love.” In the first position paper, he argues independent and Catholic schools have the right to fire a teacher for being homosexual. The second paper argues against a ban on conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice many patients and doctors say causes incredible harm.