A well-respected politician once told me that governments lose elections if voters consider them too mean-spirited. Those words have always resonated, particularly during the final weeks of the recent Manitoba election when the Conservatives engaged in a negative media campaign. Negative campaigns are often only tolerated if they don’t go too far.
The Manitoba campaign featured one ad that promoted the government’s decision not to search a landfill site for the bodies of two First Nations women believed to be victims of a serial killer who has disposed of victims in such places.