Wildrose Party leader Danielle Smith not only beat Progressive Conservative candidate John Barlow at the polls to become Highwood MLA last spring, she also received more in donations than her campaign rival.
Campaign financial statements recently released by Elections Alberta show Smith’s campaign received twice the amount of donations as Barlow’s, while the PC candidate outspent his rival by a wide margin.
Smith received $56,900 in public and corporate donations to her campaign, compared to $26,528 for Barlow. Additional funding also came from the provincial parties. For example, Barlow received $8,571 from the provincial PC Party and a $53,000 war chest from the PC’s Highwood PC Association. Smith did not receive any money from the provincial party for her campaign in Highwood and her party’s constituency association provided $12,500.
Barlow outspent Smith in the Highwood, spending more than $90,000, compared to the $55,010 Smith spent on her local campaign.
Smith said she didn’t want to run her Highwood campaign with funds from the party.
“We thought it was important to fund our campaign, to the greatest extent possible, based on local donations from local people who have a stake in what the outcome’s going to be,” she said.
Smith’s campaign ended up with a $14,559 surplus, which she said will be transferred back to the Wildrose Highwood Constituency Association.
She said volunteers were essential to keeping costs down.
“The more people you have willing to put in their time, the less you need the money,” she said.
Yet, Smith admitted money plays a larger factor at the provincial level.
“The more money you have, the more television advertising you can do and radio advertising you can do,” she said.
While the documents show Smith spent less in the riding, Barlow said she would have benefited greatly from what her party spent on its campaign at the provincial level.
“That probably doesn’t include national advertising, her bus,” he said of her local campaign expenses.
Barlow said the party also raised millions for the election and Smith’s local campaign benefited on the local level even if it wasn’t directly spent in Highwood.
“She’s the leader and I would assume they would put a lot of stock into making sure she does well, as they should,” he said.
Barlow said it’s expensive to run an election campaign, particularly against a party leader.
“We knew we had to spend money knowing what we were up against in this election,” he said. “We spent what we thought we had to. We had a budget, we stuck within our budget and that shows within our records.”
Barlow did not have any money left over after his campaign. He received $53,000 from the riding association and he said they still have money in their coffers.
As well, Barlow said the financial statements don’t reflect the amount of work volunteers contributed to the campaigns on their own time and a campaign can’t operate without them.
“It’s incredible how people make their own sacrifices in their own personal time to get involved in this,” he said.
Financial statements reveal Alberta Liberal Candidate Keegan Gibson spent $2,256 on his campaign. He did not receive any donations. The provincial Liberal Party transferred $500 to his campaign and the local constituency association provided $1,756.
While a candidate may benefit from having a large war chest, Gibson said they don’t need a lot of money to bring a different perspective to an election. He said he thinks he was able to make an impression during candidate forums, but he acknowledged the race was mainly between Smith and Barlow.
“In my case I was able to come in and be the third person, maybe an interesting dynamic between John Barlow and Danielle Smith,” he said.
Gibson said social media and the Internet also help to level the playing field for campaigns with tighter budgets.
