The UCP’s candidates come out swinging — and so does the NDP
They’ve barely started and the troops are already diving into the trenches for a two-year culture war.
On business Day 2 after the unity vote, the United Conservative Party’s leadership rivals were squabbling. Last weekend’s unity show does not mean peace among the candidates.
More striking was how the NDP jumped in on the first day to attack the UCP’s interim leader, Nathan Cooper, for his anti-gay past.
The New Democrats have a legitimate case but, still, there couldn’t be a clearer sign this government knows it’s in for a long, bitter campaign stretching out to the 2019 election.
Like many other Albertans, they never believed the conservative parties would actually unite. But the UCP formally became the real thing Tuesday, when legislature Speaker Bob Wanner accepted the new party as Alberta’s Official Opposition.
The party has 29 MLAs, making it the second-largest Opposition caucus in Alberta political history. Laurence Decore’s Liberals won 32 in 1993, in the election that launched the Ralph Klein era.
Before and after that — in 29 Alberta elections since 1905 — no other Opposition has ever held more than 19 seats. That happened a century ago, in 1917.
Oppositions are usually elected as members of one party, of course, while this one is cobbled together from two.
That’s meaningless now. This will be a fierce and seasoned group with ample legislature resources — the more MLAs in the chairs, the more research and staff money the Opposition gets.
Wildrose and PCs often launched disjointed flanking attacks on the NDP, each trying to top the other. When the legislature opens Nov. 1, they’ll be a single, armoured spearhead.
So the NDP has a strategic choice to make.
Does the governing party sit out the leadership campaign and plan for battle in the fall? Or do the New Democrats keep sticking themselves into every conservative sore spot? The answer was clear Tuesday. Cooper is the UCP’s new interim leader both inside and outside the legislature. He hardly had time to find his chair before becoming a prized NDP target for his previous involvement with a group that opposed LGBTQ rights.
Press Progress revealed that in 2009, Cooper hosted a radio show and interviewed an evangelist with anti-gay views. Cooper ran the head office of Canada Family Action, a group that called “homosexual radicals” “intolerant and ignorant.”
That was disturbing. Cooper didn’t try to deny it. He said he’s changed, partly because of what he’s learned from three openly gay members of the NDP caucus.
“Those statements do not reflect my views today in any capacity,” he said at a news conference.
“Over a 10-year period, you learn a lot. Values and views sometimes change. I think there were lots of things I didn’t understand then that I know now.”
That was a gracious and, hopefully, honest response. But this stuff always sticks. The NDP will fan the Lake of Fire every chance it gets. The goal is to contain the new UCP in the old Wildrose box.
Brian Jean, formerly the Wildrose leader, released part of his platform Tuesday. He called for lowering corporate taxes, ditching the carbon tax, cutting spending by $2.6 billion and eliminating deficits in three years.
Calgary lawyer Doug Schweitzer, starting as a distant underdog, blasted Jean’s policies as not nearly tough enough.
“Brian Jean’s big-government plan doesn’t get spending under control,” said Schweitzer. He called for a “flat budget” and immediate repeal of all NDP tax hikes.
This will heat up further on Saturday, when Jason Kenney announces his leadership bid. For three months — until the UCP selects its new leader Oct. 28 — we’ll see the candidates debate each other, while the NDP does its best to fracture the whole unity project.