SURPRISE RESIGNATION
Alberta Party’s Greg Clark quits to boost interest
Greg Clark has resigned as Alberta Party leader in a move he says is necessary to build the party for the next provincial election.
Clark, the MLA for Calgary-Elbow, is giving up the leadership at what seemed to be a moment of opportunity for the centrist Alberta Party as it added a second MLA in the legislature and looked to capitalize on the polarization between the NDP government and the Jason Kenney-led United Conservative Party.
But in an interview Friday, Clark said the party’s great potential is precisely why he needed to tender his resignation earlier this week.
“The fact is we’ve grown this party quickly and it’s really starting to pick up,” said the 46-year-old Clark, who had been leader since 2013.
“But what we need to do to be viable to win in 2019 — which I think is so important for this province — is we need to blow the doors wide open on the Alberta Party.
“To mobilize and galvanize the membership to get them really actively engaged right now, there’s really no other way of doing that than a leadership process, so that’s what we’re going to do.”
Clark said he may choose to run in that leadership contest, which he expects to be held in about three months, but has not yet come to a decision.
He said he will retain his legislature seat and plans to run again in the 2019 election.
Clark, who formally resigned the party’s top job earlier this week, brushed off questions on whether there were elements in the party working to push him out of the leadership.
“At the end of the day, it’s my decision to step back and trigger the process because I think it’s the right thing to do for the province and the right thing to do for the party,” said Clark, who acknowledged the Alberta Party has lagged in fundraising.
It has only raised $77,091 in the first nine months of the year, trailing even the Liberals, who took in $124,653. The governing NDP, meanwhile, raked in over $1.3 million, while the new UCP raised nearly $400,000 in a single quarter.
The Alberta Party will hold its annual general meeting in Red Deer next weekend, with an expected turnout of close to 400 members.
The convention comes as the Alberta political terrain continues its seismic shakeout since the election of the NDP government in 2015.
Progressive Conservatives and Wildrose members voted this summer to join together in the new United Conservative Party.
The rightward tack of the UCP, including the recent election of former PC leader and Conservative MP Kenney as leader, prompted some prominent moderate PCs, such as MLAs Richard Starke and Rick Fraser, to shy away from the new party.
Some of those ex-Tories, such as former PC party president Katherine O’Neill, have moved to the Alberta Party.
O’Neill, who is now executive director of the centrist Alberta Together political action committee, says Clark made the right call but said the influx of former PCs shouldn’t be seen as the catalyst for his resignation.
“I think that’s unfair,” she said. “I think there are so many people who have expressed opinions on both sides of it. There’s people who want it and then there’s peo- ple who don’t want it. As a good leader would, he’s taken all these opinions and looked at the larger landscape.”
O’Neill also added that despite reports, Alberta Together will play no role in the Alberta Party leadership race. Some of the PAC’s members, such as Stephen Mandel, the former Edmonton mayor and PC cabinet minister, want to be involved in a supporting capacity though, she said.
There are no declared candidates at this point.
Stephen Carter, former campaign strategist for Tory premier Alison Redford and Mayor Naheed Nenshi, said he advised Clark and the Alberta Party board that there were “strategic advantages” to holding a leadership race.
“I’d love everybody to run and I’d love for there to be a competitive race that brings 10,000 members and 500 organizers to the Alberta Party ... you build up the money, you build up the volunteers, you build up the capacity and then you’re ready to run the election,” he said.
Clark was the first and only MLA elected under the Alberta Party banner when he won in CalgaryElbow in the 2015 provincial election. At the start of the fall legislature sitting last week, he was joined by Calgary-Mackay-Nose Hill MLA Karen McPherson, who left the NDP benches in October to sit as an Independent.
McPherson said Clark’s decision “is a great opportunity for us to generate more momentum around the party and to really grow the party.”
“I have told Greg that if he decides to put his hat in the ring he has my full support,” she said.