ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - An email sent last year to the Newfoundland and Labrador premier's office by the Liberal Opposition's new spin doctor raised the prospect that Danny Williams is mentally ill or battling syphilis.
The Williams government released the 20-month-old email Wednesday, setting off a rhetorical scrap pitting the popular Tories against Craig Westcott.
Westcott -- a former journalist cast by Williams supporters as a "Danny basher" -- was just named communications director for the Liberal team of four members in the lopsided legislature.
The 48-seat house of assembly is dominated by Williams and the Progressive Conservatives except for four Liberals, one New Democrat and one vacancy.
Under the subject line, "A delicate matter," Westcott wrote to the premier's communications director, Elizabeth Matthews, on Feb. 27, 2009. He was editor of The Business Post in the province at the time.
"Please excuse the nature of this question," he wrote. "I regret to have to ask it, but it may be germane given the premier's behaviour. It has been suggested to me that Mr. Williams is bipolar. Another person suggested to me that he acts as if he is suffering in the later stages of syphilis."
The two-paragraph email goes on to ask if Williams has ever been treated for a mental illness "or any illness that might influence his behaviour and the handling of his office?"
The premier's office didn't respond to the email.
Municipal Affairs Minister Kevin O'Brien first publicly raised the email on an open-line radio program Wednesday morning. He said he didn't consult the premier before doing so, and that he'd first heard of Westcott's query back in March 2009 from Williams himself.
O'Brien said he decided to raise the matter now because Westcott has become a political figure in the province tasked with helping the Liberal Opposition make gains.
"I was really disturbed by it then as I am now," O'Brien said in an interview.
"He shouldn't write those kinds of emails to anyone -- let alone the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador."
The premier's office released the email to media after O'Brien raised it on the radio program.
Requests for comment from Westcott were referred to interim Liberal Leader Kelvin Parsons.
He downplayed the matter as the latest effort by the Williams government to bully a critic.
"It was a joke," Parsons said of the email. "It was a lark by Mr. Westcott. He sent it to Ms. Matthews, who he dealt with quite extensively in the past. As I say, some of his emails to her ... were serious ones. Some were joking ones. And it was quite obvious that Mr. Westcott never got along with the premier, disagreed with a lot of his policies and the way that he acts.
"I find it humorous, in a sense, that obviously the (premier's office) is upset that we've hired Mr. Westcott. Maybe they feel threatened in some way."
Matthews dismissed that explanation.
"For the record, one only has to read the email to know that it was not written as a joke and Premier Williams most certainly does not consider mental health issues to be a joke," she said in an email.
Westcott ran unsuccessfully for the federal Conservatives in 2008 at the height of the premier's ABC -- Anything But Conservative -- campaign that shut Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Tories out of all seven seats in the province.
His contentious email was sent four months later, a few weeks after Williams blasted Ottawa for what the premier saw as payback in the federal budget for his fight with Harper over offshore oil royalties and equalization payments.
If the Liberals hoped to downplay Westcott's missive as a joke, it didn't go over well on a popular open-line radio program in St. John's on Wednesday afternoon.
Callers of various political stripes lit up the phone lines on VOCM's Backtalk with Bill Rowe to accuse Westcott of trivializing mental health issues.
"You're stereotyping a whole vast number of people," said one caller.
"They are finished," another caller said of the provincial Liberals as a fixed-date election looms next Oct. 11.
Parsons was still defending Westcott when he called the show to stress that the Liberals take mental illness seriously.
But he left open the possibility that his new communications director may publicly apologize.
Westcott could not be reached for comment.
