Vote-splitting now on the other foot
Kenney expected to win Calgary-Lougheed in a romp, but NDP keen to give him a scare
The Calgary-Lougheed byelection set for Thursday looks like a typical Jason Kenney political lab, sterilized and sealed, the ideal test run of the UCP leader’s master plan for Alberta.
There he is, the sole conservative candidate with an audience. The options to the right of him (Alberta Advantage, Reform Party of Alberta, the inevitably appalling Larry Heather) are electorally meaningless.
Meanwhile, the centre-left is splitting itself between the NDP candidate, Phillip van der Merwe, and Liberal Leader David Khan, whose campaign is surprisingly energetic and effective.
For the first time in an actual vote for a legislature seat, the anti-Kenney forces are now in the same weak position as Wildrose and the Progressive Conservatives were before the 2015 election.
As they start to feed on each other, they weaken their ability to beat the ideological opponent.
The earlier conservative split allowed Rachel Notley and the NDP to come out of nowhere to win. Kenney today is far better known, and infinitely more prepared, than Notley was in the early stages of that campaign.
The conventional wisdom is that this makes Kenney unbeatable, first on Thursday, and in any other vote before he glides to the premier’s office in the 2019 general election.
But it’s a long run to spring of 2019. Much can change.
Former premier Jim Prentice won four byelections on Oct. 27, 2014. In December, he thought he’d co-opted Wildrose with floor-crossings. PCs were euphoric.
Only five months later they lost the election.
The case isn’t parallel, obviously, but it shows the danger of assuming too much.
Advance polling in CalgaryLougheed indicates high interest.
One-third more ballots were cast than in the 2015 advance vote.
And that was an emotional general election about change.
All this would seem to favour Kenney, but the New Democrats still hope to give him a scare.
They’re throwing all they have at the campaign, hoping not so much for victory as a result that shows Kenney isn’t all-powerful. They’d be thrilled to score 40 per cent.
The NDP attacks are often exceptionally personal. The strategy is to paint Kenney into a corner formerly occupied by right-wing elements of Wildrose. He has left doubts among some voters, especially with the UCP’s opposition to Bill 24, which strengthened protection for LGBTQ kids in gay-straight alliances.
Kenney’s rebuttals to NDP attacks are undeniably ferocious, and sometimes inaccurate, but they’re not so personal.
Both sides leave the nastiest stuff to their trolls, who take these attacks to unprecedented extremes. (As one UCP loyalist says, “They’ve got their loonies, we’ve got ours.”)
The UCP feels the dial has already moved sharply from the Bill 24 uproar at the start of the fall legislature sitting, to hard economic issues that deeply concern most Albertans — unemployment, the looming carbon tax increase, deficit spending and much more.
If Kenney does win on Thursday, he’ll immediately have more stature as leader of the official Opposition, as well as the pay — $160,000 annually before perks.
Victory will also cement his authority over the UCP caucus, which hasn’t always been as firm as it looks. He probably wouldn’t face the NDP this year because the house will rise before he’s sworn in.
Kenney will then turn to the big hole at the centre of UCP plans; this party has no official policy, and hasn’t even been formally founded by its members.
There will be a founding convention in Red Deer on May 4, and a policy meeting will come later, probably in the fall of 2018.
The UCP types say the main policy lines won’t change. Kenney promises to repeal the carbon tax and legislate a sustained period of tax relief and fiscal restraint.
Until policy is official, however, the UCP looks like an empty vessel, which the NDP ardently fills with every negative possibility.
The path to 2019 looks clear to many conservatives. Kenney keeps winning, sweeps NDP aside.
And yet, Alberta politics haven’t been predictable since the strange day in 2006 when the PC party voted to reject Premier Ralph Klein.