Ex-Calgary mayor, Harper pitch late-day endorsements
In a day of lastditch Alberta election endorsements, former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi backed NDP Leader Rachel Notley on Friday while former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper urged voters a second time to step up for the United Conservatives’ Danielle Smith.
“On the balance of probabilities, the (election) platform for the NDP is better than the platform for the UCP, but that’s not the critical thing to make a decision on,” Nenshi, with Notley beside him, told reporters in Calgary. “This is about leadership, it’s about competence and it’s about trust.
“There’s an enormous risk in returning Danielle Smith. She is someone that cannot be trusted, and I hate saying that. I’ve known her for 30 years. We’ve been friends, and yet when she said (earlier in the campaign), ‘Don’t look at what I say, look at what I do’ — you can’t say that as a politician.”
Both leaders were spending their final campaign days in Calgary, considered the key battleground of the election. Voters are now casting ballots in advance polls and election day is Monday.
Earlier Friday, Smith pointed reporters on social media to a video of Harper in which he states, “Rachel Notley and (Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau are a combination that puts Alberta’s economy at great risk.”
“In this election, there’s only one option to protect the economic livelihoods of you and your family. That’s Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party.”
Smith noted she also has the endorsement of current federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and urged her supporters to keep working with polls suggesting a tight race.
“I want to make sure that every single one of our incumbents is able to return on Monday,” she said.
In recent days, Notley has been receiving endorsements from highprofile Alberta conservatives, including former Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers along with Blake Pedersen, who once followed Smith in a massive 2014 floor crossing of the Wildrose caucus to the PCs.
Pedersen, in an interview, said he still considers himself both progressive and conservative, but doesn’t see that reflected in Smith’s UCP. He said he is a supporter of the centrist Alberta Party but said in this election, the Alberta Party doesn’t have a candidate in his Edmonton-Centre riding.
Pedersen said in the absence of that, he is throwing his support to NDP candidate David Shepherd.
“With principles and policies, there’s not much left with the UCP that I can find that aligns with what’s valuable to me,” Pedersen said.
He, along with Nenshi, said he has been concerned about comments from UCP candidates, which include Jennifer Johnson, who compared transgender students to feces. Smith has sent mixed messages about Johnson’s future, saying Johnson won’t be allowed in the UCP caucus if she wins, but also saying she believes in second chances and redemption.
“I just don’t have any space for that in my political world,” Pedersen said.