The Scud Stud has turned into The Great Litigator.
A Statement of Claim was filed by Kent's lawyers on July 15 against Don Martin, the National Post Company, CanWest Publishing Inc. and two related companies.
The offending article, Kent said, was published as an opinion piece in the Post and the Edmonton Journal, but as a page-three news story in the Herald.
"It is an intensely personal, venomous attack on both my character and the conduct of my campaign. It even drags in my family, conjuring up damaging comparisons based on falsehoods and bias," Kent said, adding that he has never met Martin.
The article quoted unnamed "senior campaign strategists" as well as other insiders in the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party.
Kent took issue with the following aspects of the article:
- Claims his campaign manager warned him that half the campaign team "was ready to quit if the candidate didn't start behaving."
- Claims Kent's financial officer "was rumoured to be on the verge of quitting."
- A statement in the article that "insiders gleefully describe how all of Kent's brochures blew off a pickup on the Deerfoot Trail, tying up traffic while workers scurried between cars retrieving thousands of pamphlets wind-whipped into a paper blizzard."
In his online statement, Kent refutes all three points. He said his campaign team was never on the verge of abandoning him, his financial officer vowed he never threatened to quit, and only a few boxes of pamphlets fell off a truck, totalling just a few hundred.
"Especially in Alberta, where one political party has dominated for nearly four decades, new candidates must be able to challenge the status quo without fear of this kind of malicious attack," Kent said.
CanWest has not commented on the suit.