Final push on for unity vote

Turnout is key factor as cracks appear amid upcoming leadership race

The campaign to unite the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties has entered its final week with a flurry of rallies, a host of last-minute logistical arrangements and some indications of potential fault lines in an upcoming leadership race.

Voting begins Thursday among Tories, who will cast their ballots either by telephone or online over three days to decide whether to join with the Wildrose to form a new United Conservative Party.

While PC Leader Jason Kenney said the Tories had more than 50,000 members after last week’s cut-off for membership sales, midnight Tuesday was the deadline for party members to register to vote, after which they will receive a PIN allowing them to cast their ballot.

PC acting executive director Janice Harrington said party staff were working furiously Monday to ensure Tories would be able to vote.

“We anticipated all this process would be part of it. What we didn’t anticipate was the massive amount of new members we got in the last week. We’re just dealing with volume right now,” she said.

Harrington said the party’s membership form webpage appeared to come under a cyberattack on the weekend.

While no personal information of members was at risk, the site was temporarily disrupted.

The party’s 2017 leadership election was organized as a delegated convention but the leadership vote prior, in 2014, was marred by problems with its telephone voting system.

Harrington said the party is using a different supplier and anticipates few bumps in the voting from July 20 to 22.

One question however is what voter turnout will be. While unity advocates have pointed to membership sales as a positive sign for the deal’s approval, Harrington acknowledged most previous PC votes had turnout at around 50 per cent of actual membership figures.

While the deal to unite unveiled by Kenney and Wildrose Leader Brian Jean in May needs only a simple majority to be approved by PC members, Wildrose requires 75 per cent approval among members attending or participating remotely in a special meeting in Red Deer on Saturday.

Its membership is pegged at over 43,000. Wildrose and Tories can each hold memberships in the other party and there is no information on how much overlap there is between the two.

Jean is spending the final week holding unity rallies over successive days in Lethbridge County, Calgary, Innisfail, Edmonton and Westlock. Kenney, after hosting a recent series of town halls, is focused on get-out-the-vote efforts this week.

Both Jean and Kenney have indicated they will run for the new UCP’s leadership if the party goes ahead, while Calgary lawyer Doug Schweitzer is also campaigning.

Jean stirred the pot in the upcoming leadership race when he told Postmedia last week that there is no appetite for an ideological “hard right” government in Alberta, casting himself as a “common sense conservative” who would not make radical budget cuts.

The comments spurred a social media reaction last week from rival camps suggesting Jean was offering up watered-down conservatism or playing nice to the left, though Kenney declined to comment Monday.

But Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt, who is inching toward his own run for the leadership, said Monday no one is disputing the need for the new party to be practical.

“But it would be a foundational error if we thought this party should not be guided by some very clear and strong principles,” he said.

“Alberta has not had a hard-right government in recent memory.”

Jean, who will be in Calgary on Tuesday, also declined to comment Monday