A united right will carry all of Alberta — except ‘Redmonton’

Support for Kenney has forced the PC party’s old power brokers to think again

The Mainstreet Research poll released last week was statistically reliable and told an interesting story.

Apart from Edmonton, Premier Rachel Notley and the NDP are as deeply unpopular in Alberta as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.

In contrast to Notley and Trudeau, both of whom have disapproval rates closing in on 60 per cent, Brian Jean, the Wildrose leader, has a 64 per cent approval rating. Outside the two big cities, the NDP are approved by 16 per cent of Albertans.

In general, NDP numbers reflect a widespread rejection of their hard-left, tax-and-spend, micromanage-and-regulate, climate-alarmist policies. The data for Calgary and Edmonton, however, reveal a more complex picture.

In Edmonton, home to public sector unions and government bureaucrats, the NDP is supported by 43 per cent of voters, followed by Wildrose (26 per cent) and the PCs (21 per cent). In Calgary, the PCs lead (38 per cent), but the NDP is second (26 per cent) and Wildrose trails (22 per cent).

What this means, barring the unification (or reunification) of the two non-socialist parties, is that the NDP might win 20 seats in Edmonton, but neither Wildrose, nor the PCs alone, have a lock on forming the next government.

One reason is that Calgarians remain wary of Wildrosers.

So what about a merger? Nearly three-quarters of the PCs support a merger, as do 65 per cent of Wildrosers.

The poll also showed that Jason Kenney was running far ahead in the leadership race of Richard Starke of Vermilion and Calgary lawyer Byron Nelson, both of whom remain largely unknown.

The more important fact is that Kenney supports a creative merger and the other two want to preserve the status quo.

The implications of this snapshot a month before the PC leadership convention are worth considering.

The most obvious is that having two status quo candidates opposing one merger candidate is, as columnist Don Braid observed, “indescribably stupid.”

Agreed, but it is also an indication that, Kenney aside, many PCs are more loyal to a narrow faction than to a big-tent party.

After the fiasco of the last election, a period of infighting was perhaps inevitable. But there are signs that Kenney’s slogan, “Unite Alberta” (as distinct from “unite the right”), is gaining traction within the PC organization.

Last summer, for example, the PC establishment, namely the surviving mechanics who once greased the oligarchic machine, tried to prevent a merger by construing it to mean “causing harm and disrepute” to the party name and disqualifying anyone who advocated such an awful thing.

This showed only that the mechanics refused to accept responsibility for what the PCs had become.

As late as January, this faction still had enough clout to force the suspension of a Kenney supporter, Alan Hallman, because he was impolite on Twitter.

But as Kenney’s support grew, the establishment had to bend.

A couple of weeks ago, for example, Jeff Rath, a fundraiser for Starke (and one who also donated to the Trudeau Liberals and the provincial NDP), tried to have Kenney banned under the “harm and disrepute” clause.

Party president Katherine O’Neill quashed Rath’s motion and Starke and Rath parted ways. When Darcy Schumann, another mechanic, wanted the PC board to hear additional complaints against Kenney, O’Neill refused to call a meeting.

Rath’s parting shot was that Kenney “is going to leave nothing but devastation in his wake.” On the contrary. As Kenney said, the PCs are not “an organized act of nostalgia that’s trying to defend the past.” When united with Wildrose, they will command the support of Calgary, the smaller cities and rural Alberta.

As for Redmonton, do real conservatives care?