Here's some info about Kim Campbell, Canada's first and only female prime minister. She won the leadership of the governing Conservative Party in June, 1993...thus automatically being appointed as Prime Minister. Her time in office till her defeat at the polls lasted only until November of the same year.

Campbell's career was characterized by some as "a quick rise to fame from a relatively unknown cabinet member to prime minister." In fact, she had served in four cabinet portfolios prior to running for the party leadership and had more experience than eleven of the 18 men who preceded her as prime minister, including Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney, who had no cabinet experience at all, and Pierre Trudeau, who had served only one year as Minister of Justice. Campbell had developed a considerable profile during her three years as Minister of Justice and garnered support of more than half the PC caucus when she declared for the leadership.

Like John Turner before her, Campbell's term as Prime Minister would be almost entirely dominated by an electoral campaign. Initially she was very popular[4]- and became the eponym of "Campbellmania," just as one of her predecessors, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, was the subject of late-1960s Trudeaumania. For a while, she appeared to have a chance of repairing her party's reputation, which had been badly damaged after a number of scandals during the Mulroney government.

Campbell did extensive campaigning during the summer, touring the nation and attending barbecues and other events. By the end of the summer, her personal popularity had increased greatly, far surpassing that of Chrétien.[5] Support for the Progressive Conservative Party had also increased, and they were only a few points behind the Liberals, while the Reform Party had been reduced to single digits.

Campbell also became the only Canadian Prime Minister not to have resided at 24 Sussex Drive since that address became the official home of the Prime Minister of Canada in 1951. Initially, Campbell's predecessor Brian Mulroney remained at 24 Sussex while renovations on his new home in Montreal were being completed. Campbell instead took up residence at Harrington Lake, and did not move into 24 Sussex after Mulroney left.


The 1993 election
When an election was called in the fall of 1993, the party had high hopes that they might be able to remain the government and, if not, would at least be a strong opposition to a Liberal minority government.

However, Campbell's initial popularity soon declined due to public-relations mistakes committed after the writ was dropped. When she was running for the party leadership, Campbell's frank honesty was seen as an important asset and a sharp contrast from Mulroney's highly polished style. However, that backfired when she told reporters and a Rideau Hall event that it was unlikely that the deficit or unemployment would be much reduced before the "end of the century". During the election campaign, she stated that discussing a complete overhaul of Canada's social policies in all their complexities could not be done in just 47 days (the time allotted to an election campaign). However, a reporter truncated this comment to "an election is no time to discuss serious issues."

Campbell appeared to have troubles relating to "regular" Canadians, and many felt that she had an overly condescending and pretentious tone. In addition, she was criticized as carrying much the same attitudes and positions of her widely detested predecessor. She was frequently greeted by the activist chant "Kim, Kim, you're just like him."

Some have attempted to point to her gender as a major contributing factor to her historic loss, but there is scant evidence to support that assertion. Analysis of the press coverage of the campaign reveals that a constant theme of the coverage itself was its unfairness. Journalists wrote openly about the double standard applied to Campbell, but there was little or no attempt to analyse why this was the case. Scholarly analysis by experts such as Richard Johnston of the University of British Columbia asserts that Campbell's "47 days" comment, (a response to a journalist's attempt to charge her with a hidden agenda) was not the key factor in the vote decline, but was made after the trend had shifted. Rather, the attempt to attribute a hidden agenda on social programs to her in and of itself reminded voters of what they believed about Mulroney - that he would say one thing but do another. Without time to establish a new record for her government, Campbell remained vulnerable to the negative perceptions people had of her predecessor.

The Conservatives' support tailed off rapidly as the campaign progressed. By October, it was obvious that Campbell and the Tories would not be reelected. All polls showed the Liberals were on their way to at least a minority government, and would probably win a majority without dramatic measures. However, Campbell was still personally more popular than Liberal leader Jean Chrétien. Knowing this, the Conservative campaign team put together a series of ads attacking Chrétien. The second ad appeared to mock Chrétien's Bell's Palsy facial paralysis, and generated a severe backlash from all sides. Even some Tory candidates called for the ad to be yanked. Campbell claims to have not been directly responsible for the ad, and to have ordered it off the air[6] over her staff's objections. However, she didn't apologize and lost a chance to contain the fallout from the ad.

The ad flap was widely regarded as the final nail in Campbell's coffin. Conservative support plummeted into the teens, all but assuring that the Liberals would win a majority government short of a complete meltdown in the dying days of the campaign. Canadian humourist Will Ferguson suggested that this incident meant Campbell should receive "some of the blame" for her party's losses, though "taking over the party leadership from Brian (Mulroney) was a lot like taking over the controls of a 747 just before it plunges into the Rockies."[7]

The Somalia Affair took place during her "watch" as Minister of National Defence and became a handicap during her subsequent period of public life. When the Liberal Party of Canada took power, the incident became the subject of a lengthy public inquiry, aimed further at embarrassing Campbell and the PCs.

On election night, the Conservatives were swept from power in a massive Liberal landslide. Campbell herself was defeated in Vancouver Centre by rookie Liberal Hedy Fry. It was only the third time in Canadian history that a sitting prime minister was unseated at the same time that his or her party lost an election. In 1921, Arthur Meighen was unseated in his Manitoba riding at the same time that his Conservatives were defeated; this recurred in 1926 to end his second brief tenure as prime minister. Mackenzie King led the Liberals to victory in the 1925 election, but lost his seat and had to win a by-election to get back into Parliament. Except for Jean Charest, every Cabinet member running for re-election lost their seat. With few exceptions, the Tories' previous support in the west moved to Reform, while the Bloc Québécois inherited most Tory support in Quebec. In some cases, the Bloc pushed Cabinet ministers from Quebec into third place.

The Tories still finished with over two million votes, taking third place in the popular vote, and falling only two percentage points short of Reform for second place. However, due to quirks in the first past the post system, Tory support was not concentrated in enough areas to translate into victories in individual ridings. In contrast, the geographic concentration of support for Reform in the West and the Bloc in Quebec garnered them significant numbers of parliamentary seats. As a result, the Tories won only two seats compared to Reform's 52 and the Bloc's 54. It was the worst defeat in party history, and the worst defeat ever suffered by a governing party at the federal level.

Campbell faced hurdles that she blamed as being insurmountable despite evidence to the contrary. Mulroney left office as one of the most (and according to Campbell, the most[8]) unpopular prime ministers since opinion polling began in the 1940s. He considerably hampered his own party's campaign effort by staging a very lavish international farewell tour at taxpayer expense and staying in office until only two and a half months were left in his mandate. Under the circumstances, Campbell came into office with almost no room to make mistakes. Nonetheless, Campbell's pre-election summer tour did put the Progressive Conservatives back up in the polls to only a few points behind the Liberals. Her finger-pointing after the massive loss has been seen by some as more evidence of her lack of fitness for the position.

By the time she dropped the writ for the 1993 election, she was only a few days from becoming the first prime minister to allow a Parliament to expire. Another factor was that the race was a five-way contest with Reform and the Bloc competing with the three traditional parties for votes. There was no issue like the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement five years earlier to make support for such parties seem risky.

Soon after the defeat, Campbell resigned as party leader; Charest succeeded her.