Transcript
Annalise
0:01
Welcome to The Strategist, episode 1069. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil. With you, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan.
Corey
0:10
And the looming specter of four more years of UCP government. Four
Annalise
0:15
Four more years. Yeah.
Annalise
0:18
Carter, what time did you go to bed last night? You missed the excitement. About midnight.
Carter
0:22
That was the latest I've
Annalise
0:26
You're so old. You had, I saw you shortly before midnight and you had a lot of energy. I
Carter
0:31
I went home and then went to bed.
Corey
0:34
There was a whole thing. You guys did the thing. Yeah, we did a
Annalise
0:38
a thing. I'll tell you, there had never been so much happiness. Yeah,
Annalise
0:42
unreal. People wanted selfies with Stephen Carter. Like, I'm sure he got asked for autographs. I've heard that
Corey
0:48
that like, insulting joke selfies with minor celebrities is a thing with
Corey
0:53
Gen Z. I have heard that. they
Annalise
0:54
they weren't jay-z actually you remember you remember doing
Carter
0:56
doing a live show and
Carter
0:58
and people took selfies with you do
Corey
1:01
well mostly you were in the picture too so it was me and them in on the joke about you no
Annalise
1:06
no there was selfie requests uh stephen carter was riding high until results started to come in it was good how was radio cory i
Corey
1:13
i was not riding high until results came in because i had two hours to kill on radio with no results that would
Carter
1:20
would have been Let
Corey
1:21
Let me tell you something.
Corey
1:23
It was, you know, CBC consummate professionals love those guys. There was a funny moment, probably about an hour and a half into waiting for results, where in the studio with many of us in the studio, where Judy Aldis, the host is just looking at us like, anybody
Corey
1:38
anybody got anything? Like, what are we going to talk about here?
Corey
1:42
And it was a whole vibe. It was a whole vibe. What
Annalise
1:44
What did you talk about? Like, tell us because I don't, I'm not sure how many people were listening to radio there, Corey. About
Corey
1:51
About 100,000. Probably more
Annalise
1:52
more than showed up at the
Carter
1:55
That was as many as came to the national last night. It was exactly
Corey
2:01
drinks for all of them.
Corey
2:02
Are we both counting the way the NDP counted crowds at their final events? I believe that's
Carter
2:06
the technique that we're using.
Annalise
2:08
timely. I thought people would have been on TV. I didn't think radio would be a popular medium. you know the
Corey
2:16
the thing about radios
Corey
2:16
radios relative to televisions is like it's very tough to watch television in your car for example this is something they teach you when you go to like these radio things and you talk to them yeah okay
Annalise
2:28
okay so you felt like two two three hours before uh before yeah probably
Corey
2:33
two hours before things started to really take shape and
Corey
2:36
and uh more time after that like we were on we started at 7 30 and we didn't get off until 12 15 or so Wow.
Annalise
2:43
Carter did interviews with, who came to our party there? Carter, CTV and Global? CTV and
Carter
2:50
and Global. Yeah. It
Carter
2:51
was an interview. And I've done like nothing but interviews today too. It's been great. Really enjoyed it. You're
Corey
2:56
You're living that dream. You love it. Yeah.
Carter
2:58
Yeah. What went wrong? And what would you say was the real problem? What are
Corey
3:03
are the next four years looking like? Interesting. So that's a lot of people's frame, especially from out east. It's interesting the frame is not like, how did Danielle Smith do it? What went right? But like, it's really coming from a bit of a negative space, eh?
Carter
3:15
Well, I think that they maybe met her and that is, you know.
Corey
3:20
Okay. But like, you can sort of see the frustration and why that might drive people crazy who are in the conservative movement in Alberta, though. You
Carter
3:27
You can see that, but the, you know, there's, I'm refusing to concede it, much in the same fashion that I got stubborn and refused to concede anything with Chester, you know, like. There was,
Corey
3:38
I'm going to give you a peek into the text
Corey
3:40
text here last night, where on the radio, I'm basically saying, hey, like, not called yet, but definitely looks like the UCP is on track here. And
Corey
3:48
And Carter starts yelling at me via text that I'm wrong. Yeah.
Corey
3:51
Yeah. That was not the case. Carter
Annalise
3:53
Carter had his laptop. He was. No, listen. it was a close happening it was very close and i and i it
Carter
3:58
it was very i bring it up because it was very close um we've had a lot of uh post-game analysis where people are saying that it wasn't that close that it was uh that it was a landslide and i just want to kill people as always because it's not a landslide we'll
Annalise
4:16
we'll we'll get into all that i just before we do will we annalise
Annalise
4:22
what after after everything we went through together last night why are you being so aggressive to me right now
Corey
4:27
now i think i think you answered your own question here's the thing we
Carter
4:29
we went to the dog park tonight right because we walked the dog together heather and
Corey
4:34
was we heather and i like this is an unclear antecedent and then we had so heather and
Carter
4:37
and i we went to the dog park tonight we had the dogs and uh dog
Carter
4:42
dog named chester ironically just i like
Corey
4:44
like that name kept
Carter
4:45
kept kept trying to fuck my dog and it was it was
Carter
4:49
was reminiscent of when we were working with chester and he kept trying to fuck you and me cory and i gotta tell you like i was like while
Annalise
4:57
while you're outside losing
Carter
4:58
losing it today like i was outside trying to relax preparation for the show and chester is like trying to just fuck
Carter
5:05
fuck rider and i'm like this is so much you're on edge podcast right like this This is so much the history. Like,
Carter
5:11
Like, people don't know the stuff up to 526. People don't understand. That's true. Up to 526 was
Carter
5:18
was fucking frustrating. People,
Annalise
5:18
People, including me, I
Annalise
5:20
I don't know who any of these people are.
Carter
5:23
It was a little different. Like, what are you talking about?
Annalise
5:27
Okay, well, Carter, calm down. Take a breath. Do you have water tonight? Do you have
Corey
5:31
I have water. He's going to
Corey
5:32
put ice in his cup. I
Corey
5:33
I got water. It's going to be an audio nightmare. We don't have a producer
Corey
5:36
producer tonight. I can't
Annalise
5:38
him anymore. gonna we're gonna jump into it our before we go into the deep dive and carter makes some apologies and tells us what went wrong oh
Corey
5:46
oh love it uh
Annalise
5:48
yeah yeah that's what we can call it exactly i do want to just tell me what just to start for a segment like what is the day after campaign like and and maybe walk me through for both like a winning campaign losing winning candidate losing candidate like what what is you know we've we've kind of treated this um alberta election as a case study for the past six weeks and so i think we should kind of wrap that up in terms of what is what is day after e-day actually like cory
Carter
6:14
do you want me to take the winning one yeah
Corey
6:16
yeah yeah it makes sense you take the winning i'll take losing so
Carter
6:21
after winning it's spectacular i mean first of all i have even the energy i think when allison redford won i stayed up till three in the morning uh which was unheard of unheard of i was old even then um but
Carter
6:33
but you know The next morning at 7 a.m., I had a meeting with the outgoing chief of staff. At 7
Carter
6:43
We were going to do a quick flip because we were, of course, changing at that time from an internal
Carter
6:49
internal leadership. So it was a change. When we won in 2012, I got fired on election night. So it was less important to me what happened to me the next day. um and then other campaigns you know like when when nancy
Carter
7:03
nancy won it was all media when uh redford like there's tons of media and tons of things like that you have to do like i noted that there was media conferences today media you know each of the leaders spoke these types of things that so it's almost like it's it's day 29 of the official campaign um you are not slowing down and if you are slowing down you're just you're like doing absolutely horrible things like cleaning out the office taking down the signs um just absolutely tragic it's okay when you've won but it is absolutely horrible the day after the election when you've lost are you
Annalise
7:39
you starting to think like are you starting to say hey here's who i have in here could who could be cabinet potential and that sort of thing or that's those are future
Carter
7:46
future problems that was done before actually um more often than not you had an initial cabinet list prior to the election um based on where you you thought your seat projections were. You probably would have to, you know, switch it around based on who actually won and who actually lost. But you're not waiting for the election to do that. You've got a list in advance so that you're hitting the ground running, especially if you want to have an early swearing in. The swearing in really dictates everything. If you want to have a very quick turnaround, then you've really got to hit the ground running.
Annalise
8:23
When you say the swearing in dictates everything, what do you mean? So
Carter
8:26
So the swearing in is when the government, so the old government still exists, right? Like Daniel Smith from before is still the premier, the cabinet ministers from before are still the cabinet ministers. Until such time as the new government is sworn in, they retain the government, right? The government continues past
Carter
8:42
the election. selection uh so technically when i when i was you know brought in as chief of staff in the order and council to make me chief of staff i was technically ed stellmach's chief of staff okay
Carter
8:54
because he was still the premier before we'd been sworn before allison was sworn in her cabinet was sworn in and also the the cabinet was sworn in out
Carter
9:04
out of sequence right so we didn't do everybody all at once we did allison first and then we brought the cabinet in a couple days later um which is not unheard of at all where the premier takes their position and then from that uh because then they've got essentially the old cabinet still working for them until the uh the swearing-in happens so you it's not like people think it is it's not the american system where everything kind of well even the american system nothing disappears you know the president's the president until 12 noon and then at 1201 they swear in we don't quite do it that way with that that kind of pomp and circumstance. But the swearing in is the official change of government.
Annalise
9:43
Okay, Corey, walk us through what it's like on a losing campaign the day after.
Corey
9:48
Well, it's tough. It's sad. And there are still things to do. And it's not as easy to get them done, both kind of mentally as you have to clean things up. It's like cleaning up after a party. It's just not an awful lot of fun. But also, you don't have the volunteers, you don't have the people reaching out. It's not quite the same thing. It's not going the same way. You'll have You have your friends reaching out to you and saying like, hey, how are you doing? Hey, you've ran a good campaign, all of the things that friends do. And you get fucking sick of it as well. Because everybody calls and you have to say the same thing. And you almost end up like you're doing a media circuit with your friends, just giving the same lines, right? Time and time again, until finally you snap on one friend and you say something darkly cynical or something like that. Like
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