‘A struggle between the head and the heart for people in both parties’
Albertans will know Saturday night whether the province’s political landscape will soon change forever.
Paid-up members of the Wildrose and Progressive Conservative parties are heading to the polls — online, or phoning in — to have their say about whether the two shall come together and form a new political force called the United Conservative Party.
For members of Wildrose, news will filter down just after voting closes at 4 p.m. For Progressive Conservatives, who have been voting since Thursday, it will be a little after 6 p.m. for results to be known.
The ballot has been more than one year in the making.
Last July, then-MP Jason Kenney left Ottawa to bust into Alberta politics, clutching in his fist a five-point path toward unity and declaring he was running for the Tory leadership.
In December, Wildrose Leader Brian Jean said he’d be pleased to waltz with Kenney in the unity dance.
Fast-forward to March when Kenney won the PC throne under a mandate to unite and the gears to create an agreement started grinding in earnest.
Since then, those supportive of unity have been traipsing through the province to drum up membership sales for both parties.
They spit verbal fire at NDP policies, warning of Alberta’s guaranteed ruination if conservatives don’t come together before the next election.
When asked, Wildrosers like Jean and outspoken MLA Derek Fildebrandt voice their confidence that their party will be victorious at the next election without anybody’s help, thank you very much.
But there’s an unmistakable quaking underneath — they’ll never forgive themselves if they don’t do all they can to avoid a second NDP term, they say, and that includes pinching their noses and holding hands with the party Wildrose spurned in 2007.
After all, the Wildrose was created from a splinter of disgruntled Tories who didn’t like the arrogance and big-spending of the governing party.
Kenney says he knew it would take time to heal wounds wrought from the bitter personal feuds between Tories and Wildrosers in some parts of the province.
“It has been a struggle between the head and the heart for people in both parties, but ultimately I think the head has won out,” Kenney said.
“Even though there might be some residual resentments from things that have been said or done in the last decade, they know that this has to happen.”
SWINGING THE NUMBERS
Kenney and Jean are both convinced some in the NDP who want to avoid a united conservative force bought Wildrose memberships to vote against unity.
They are strange bedfellows indeed with the hardcore Wildrosers who believe the merger is their beloved grassroots party giving up all it holds dear and bending to The Establishment.
Those Wildrose members just want the PCs to choke to dust in the next election, saying they’re clutching to the merger as their only hope of staying alive.
Jean and Kenney don’t see an organized “no” movement by the left, and nor do Wildrose president Jeff Callaway and PC executive-director Janice Harrington. “There’s not enough of a groundswell if that’s the case,” Harrington says.
She also points out a fundamental flaw in that theory — many PC membership buys came with donations. With a laugh, she adds, “I don’t think the NDP would be doing that.”
“My gut is telling me that the vast majority of people (who bought) ... memberships are supporters of the PCs, or conservatives in general.”
The big fight here won’t be on the PC side, where voting began July 20, because according to its constitution only half of its 42,000 members have to vote “yes” to start the machinations of unity.
But the Wildrose Party needs 75 per cent of members to vote yes — quite the task when there are 40,000 people involved, a chunk of whom have been grumbling about the agreement since the beginning.
Jean and Kenney both finger that number as the biggest challenge ahead of Saturday’s vote, rather than the 50 per cent the PCs need.
“This is a challenge, but it’s worth it,” Jean says.
“Alberta is worth it. I’ll be campaigning for unity right up until the end.”