ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - To hear Premier Kathy Dunderdale tell it, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is a man transformed who learned from the drubbing he got in Newfoundland and Labrador in 2008.
"People change," she recently told reporters. "People change all the time."
Dunderdale was explaining her own dizzying about-face from Harper critic to grip-and-grinning booster. So dim was her view of the federal Tory machine in 2008 that she door-knocked with a Liberal candidate rather than wave the Team Harper flag during the last election.
All that is behind her now. Dunderdale and her Tories have thrown their weight behind Conservative candidates who hope to win at least two of seven federal seats in the province on May 2.
Any gains in Newfoundland and Labrador could be crucial additions to the 12 extra seats Harper needs for his coveted majority government.
Gone are the acerbic days of the ABC or "Anything But Conservative" campaign waged by former premier Danny Williams, who retired in December. It was political payback for what Williams called a broken promise to protect offshore resources from equalization clawbacks. His wrath cost the Conservatives three seats in the province, sending six Liberals and one New Democrat to Ottawa.
In September 2008, Dunderdale hit the hustings with Liberal candidate and now incumbent Siobhan Coady, telling a CBC reporter that she wanted to back "people of principle, and, you know, when they say something you can rely on their word."
Dunderdale is defiant when asked about her new-found faith in Harper. It's a trust that coincides with his campaign promise to offer loan guarantees, or an equivalent, for a $6.2 billion hydroelectric megaproject in Labrador. The planned Lower Churchill development is billed as one of the largest cleaner energy ventures of its kind in North America.
"I don't have to eat those words," Dunderdale told reporters. "I speak as I find. There were a particular set of circumstances," that led to the ABC spat, she said.
"If I find myself in the same place again, I would take the same kind of action again. But when somebody does something differently, and responds differently -- as you have been asking them to do ... what kind of hypocrite would I be not to say so?"
With Williams gone and Dunderdale building federal bridges, a big question remains: Will voters jump on the Harper bandwagon?
Veteran pollster Don Mills of Halifax-based Corporate Research Associates said before the federal campaign started March 26, he noticed a rebound of Tory support and a preference for Harper as prime minister over Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.
"From a historical point of view, there's always been a pretty strong federal Conservative base in Newfoundland," particularly on the Avalon Peninsula, Mills said.
"The ABC campaign was very effective at switching votes, really, from the Conservatives to the NDP.
"A lot of people parked their vote with the NDP."
Still, the blunt force of the ABC campaign could affect Conservative fortunes, said Alex Marland, a political scientist at Memorial University in St. John's, N.L.
Voters may not be so quick to forgive and move on, he said in an interview.
"In Newfoundland and Labrador there's not a lot of love for the Harper Conservatives and ... certainly the public has had that hammered into them for quite awhile. It really takes somebody as popular as Danny Williams to undo that.
"Kathy Dunderdale may have a lot of strengths, but she's not the giant slayer that Danny Williams is."
Williams was not available to comment and has so far kept a low profile in the federal campaign.
The province's notoriously dismal turnout for federal elections could be another big factor, Marland said. Just 48 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in 2008, compared to 59 per cent nationally, the lowest turnout across the country in Canadian history.
"There might be a lot of people saying that they're upset (with Harper) but whether those same people actually vote or not is another matter," Marland said.
Provincial Liberal Leader Yvonne Jones has accused Dunderdale of "selling out" in exchange for Harper's support of the Labrador hydroelectric project.
"She got it right off the bat so she sold out the people of Newfoundland and Labrador on every other file," she told reporters. "And that's what is disgusting about all of this.
"While I think the government may have been gullible in believing Stephen Harper, I don't think the people of this province are."
The riding of St. John's South-Mount Pearl is expected to be one of the closest fights in the country. Incumbent Liberal Siobhan Coady is up against Conservative challenger Loyola Sullivan, a former provincial cabinet minister who gave up his post as fisheries ambassador.
Coady has taken to open-line radio airwaves reminding listeners that Harper can't be trusted.
Sullivan said if the Conservatives win the election, it's time the province had a representative in the government.
"You can't deliver if you're not in government," he said in an interview. "You have to be at the table to emphasize on the decision-makers your issues, your priorities, to fight for those priorities and try to get them to move in that direction."
He and Coady will also face NDP challenger Ryan Cleary, who placed a close second behind Coady in 2008.
Cleary scoffed at the notion voters will gloss over why they shut out Conservatives less than three years ago.
"Newfoundlanders and Labradorians don't forget," he said in an interview.
Disdain for Harper stretches back to 2002 when the former Canadian Alliance leader described Atlantic Canadians as suffering from a "culture of defeat," he added.
"You can't just flick a switch and go from not liking the guy to liking the guy. That's not the way people work.
"I see it at the door. The first reaction is: 'I am not voting for Stephen Harper.' "
