Albertans let Danielle Smith check her past baggage. Let's see where she lands next

Shortly after Danielle Smith became premier last fall, communications director Jonah Mozeson made a small poster and pinned it up behind his desk. He printed a couple dozen copies and urged all ministers' press secretaries to similarly decorate their office walls.

The poster asked a simple question to United Conservatives, a thought experiment of sorts that would prove pivotal in Monday's election victory.

The question: Will this help us get elected in Calgary–Peigan?

That southeast Calgary riding was held by an MLA that Smith had shuffled to UCP's backbenches, but Tanya Fir's status wasn't the point.

According to Mozeson's math, Peigan was the bellwether, the red-line riding Team Smith absolutely could not afford to lose. If it flipped to the NDP, the government would, too.

The message was this: all aides and politicians, from Danielle Smith on down, needed to view every decision and public utterance through the lens of south Calgary suburbanites, and not say or do anything that would turn off that middle-of-the-road Albertan.

Translation: no vaccine skepticism, no spooking seniors about pensions, no zany policy brain waves. Tell voters in Calgary-Peigan how strong the economy will be under UCP rule, how stable their public services, how low their taxes, how pretty the picture.

A huge reason the UCP won and get to keep the premier's and ministers' offices is that one critical person was locked onto that tight message track for not just the entire campaign, but nearly all Smith's premiership.

That one critical person is and will remain Alberta's premier. (For now, at least.)

The Danielle Smith that the NDP had depicted as extreme and erratic did not show up for the debate, or at any time during the election period — older clips notwithstanding. 

She'd turned her back on a lifetime of libertarian populism, of musings about health care user pay and doubt in science on climate change and public health.

She largely jettisoned most of the ideas she'd campaigned on to win the UCP leadership and become premier seven months ago — an Alberta-only pension plan and police force, enshrining rights of the unvaccinated into the Human Rights Act, health spending accounts for uninsured services. She passed the Sovereignty Act as her Bill 1 last December, and then stopped talking about it once calendars switched to 2023.

With all those more divisive ideas purportedly behind her, Smith instead played a radio-friendly music mix of low taxes, safe streets, big spending — hello, Calgary Flames arena — and improved public health care.

That politician who reveres the libertarian streaks of divisive Republican governors Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis? Smith campaigned more like an Erin O'Toole-style moderate.