NDP hoping to cash in on fear of a united conservative front

Supporters receive fundraising letters as Wildrose, Conservative parties try to merge

Within a few hours of the declaration of the tentative WildroseProgressive Conservative unity deal last week, Alberta’s New Democratic Party headquarters began sending fundraising letters to supporters.

“Following months of infighting and navel-gazing, the PCs and Wildrose have put forward a plan to merge — and their sole purpose is to defeat us,” said a party email from Sarah Hoffman, who is health minister and deputy premier.

Hoffman went on to say, “(PC Leader) Jason Kenney and (Wildrose Leader) Brian Jean aren’t doing this because it’s in the best interest of Albertans — they’re doing it for their own political gain.”

You could certainly make that argument, just as you could argue that Kenney and Jean really do think defeating the NDP is in the best interest of Albertans.

Fundraising letters are not about balance or fairness.

They’re partisan missives designed to get supporters riled up and digging deep. “Please donate $50 or more to strengthen our team and be part of this fight,” pleads Hoffman.

Using the Wildrose-PC unification deal as a means to rattle NDP supporters into donating money is hardly surprising. In fact, it’s part of an evolution in how the NDP has dealt with the unite-the-right movement.

Last July, when unification was a mere twinkle in Kenney’s eye, Premier Rachel Notley dismissed the movement with a rhetorical yawn, saying “it won’t matter.”

In January, she gave a figuratively shrug, declaring, “I haven’t been spending a lot of time focusing on that.”

This spring in the legislature, she ridiculed on a daily basis the “dance partners” across the aisle.

But that was all political theatre. The NDP has been watching every twitch and jerk of the unification movement as if it were a political soap opera.

On Thursday, even before the tentative unification deal was announced, Notley let slip her mask of indifference to fire a shot at the dance partners as they got ready to tango.

“They’re a group that are moving increasingly to more and more extreme positions to the point where they may fall right off the map,” she said.

This will be Notley’s talking point from now on as members of the Wildrose and PCs move toward a ratification vote July 22 to form the United Conservative Party — that the new party will be a home to right-wing zealots hankering for a return to Ernest Manning’s Alberta.

New Democrats are quietly hoping the unification deal will yet fall through so they’ll have a divided conservative opposition next election, as they had in 2015.

The NDP will also be looking for cracks between the Wildrose and PCs — and we did see one emerge on Thursday.

Jean told journalists the new party will operate under the “legal framework” of the Wildrose. That’s an important point for Wildrose diehards who want their party to take the lead in unification.

However, when I asked Tyler Shandro, a unity negotiator with the PCs, if the new party will be formed under the Wildrose framework, he had a blunt, “No.”

“It’s a new framework for a new party,” said Shandro, who argued the parties are starting off on an equal footing.

Or should I say, ending on an equal footing. Both parties will be wound down to make way for the new party.

Their financial assets, and here I’m talking mainly about the Wildrose’s million-dollar account (not the PC debt), cannot legally be used to promote a new party.

The Wildrose money can be used for non-partisan advertising — for example, to question the NDP carbon tax.

The Wildrose assets won’t be handed over to Elections Alberta as many members had feared, but neither can the money be used to fund the new party’s next election campaign (but it could be used to finance the Wildrose campaign if the unification deal were to fall through).

The new party will be starting off with virtually no money. They’ll need to issue fundraising letters to supporters. On that front, at least, the NDP is ahead.