Kenney steps down after disappointing review vote
EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has resigned as leader of the United Conservative Party of Alberta after winning 51.4 per cent approval in a leadership review.
The resignation triggers a leadership contest in the very party Kenney was instrumental in building, cobbling together the pieces of the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose party.
“The result is not what I hoped for, or frankly, what I expected,” Kenney said Wednesday evening after the stunning vote result was announced.
While Kenney won the review — 51.4 per cent to 48.6 per cent of the 34,298 party members who voted — he deemed it insufficient to stay on as party leader.
“It clearly is not adequate support to continue on as leader, and that is why tonight, I have informed the president of the party of my intention to step down as leader of the United Conservative Party,” said Kenney. “I'm sorry, but friends, I truly believe that we need to move forward united, we need to put the past behind us and our members — a large number of our members — have asked to clear the air through a leadership election.”
The leadership vote represented the culmination of months of bitterness and discontent within the party's ranks. And, even with Kenney's exit, says Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, the party has some serious divisions to heal.
“Kenney was the architect, Kenney helped bring them together, Kenney won the large election victory. Well, now you've removed all of that stuff,” said Bratt. “What's the urban-rural gap? What's the progressive versus Reform-Wildrose gap? What's the gap between moderates who just want to win versus ideologues who want to enact certain policies?”
It's a huge fall from grace for Kenney,
who returned to Alberta politics in 2015 after years serving in the Stephen Harper government in Ottawa. He united Alberta's two right-wing parties and crushed Rachel Notley's New Democrats in the 2019 election.
But his UCP government hit headwinds when pipelines were cancelled and major energy projects abandoned. Then the pandemic hit, and Kenney made decisions that turned out to be deeply unpopular with some in his party.
The government caucus will now need to elect an interim leader and the party will go about preparing for a leadership race, which is likely to occur in the next three to six months.
Two candidates have already declared their intention to replace Kenney: Brian Jean, a Fort McMurray MLA, recently returned to politics, and Danielle Smith, a former leader of the Wildrose party, who has been working in recent years as a media personality.