Premier in it for the long run

A .500 average might be a huge deal in baseball, but in Alberta politics it will get a premier fired every time.

It is therefore bizarre that Alison Redford’s loyalists say she can soldier on with the approval of just over 50 per cent of delegates at the Progressive Conservative party’s convention in Red Deer this weekend.

“In my mind anything in the 50s (per cent) is good, anything in the 60s is a success and anything in the 70s is absolutely a triumph,” says Susan Elliott, Redford’s campaign manager in the last election.

Other spin maestros claim that because the PC party is such a big tent, it’s bound to have some loose pegs.

This turns dissent into a virtue and explains why, as one of the premier’s officials said without choking: “50 per cent plus one is the working premise ... I fully expect it (the support) not to be as high as we all like, but that’s the nature of the party.”

This is all gibberish designed to reshape reality and lower expectations, so that even a really bad number looks good.

Behind that lies a tougher message; she’s staying, no matter what.

The premier would much rather be solidly reaffirmed, obviously. And for that, she needs more than the 77 per cent support picked up by ex-premier Ed Stelmach on Nov. 7 2009.

Ed’s crew strained and groaned like Clydesdales to get that vote over the finish line.

He virtually begged for another chance in his speech. Delegates faced the oddity of numbered ballots and ballot stubs, seen by some as a way to track and identify the loyal and the disloyal.

After Stelmach logged a score that seemed, well, quite high, he ended up leaving within 14 months anyway.

Ralph Klein quit in 2005 after getting 55 per cent. Joe Clark called a federal PC leadership convention in 1983 after carding 66 per cent. He lost, after hundreds of happy new Canadians won a trip to Winnipeg on the Brian Mulroney Bus Line.

So no, 50 per cent is not good news — not for Redford or any politician, except maybe Rob Ford.

“The leadership campaigns would begin overnight in cabinet and caucus even with a vote in the mid-60s,” says one party veteran, who will not be identified for fear of banishment.

“We’d be right back into the Ed thing. It would be chaos.”

While Redford herself professes not even to think about the vote, her reality shapers are trying to paint 2013 as a new world where the old party rules don’t apply.

Problems are so complex, they suggest, that any kind of majority will be an admirable feat.

They’ve been working pretty hard on that majority. A quiet committee, mentioned here before, has weekly conference calls on Monday nights, in search of ways to boost the premier’s vote.

The government itself is frenetically active this week, announcing a health charter, an organ donor registry, and much else.

Often such causes are the cow herd of politics, to be milked vigorously when the optics demand it, and then led back to the barn.

Both the charter and the registry, for instance, have been trumpeted for months but are still a long way from practical benefit to Albertans.

How will Redford do on Saturday? Most PCs feel she’ll poll a respectable number.

But if the delegates do decide to go low, this premier is signalling that she won’t leave without a fight.