Categories
Alberta Politics

liberal mla accused of leading “super secret cabal.”

A photo of Edmonton Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman.
The accused cabeller, MLA Laurie Blakeman.

Former Liberal Communications Director Neil Mackie has accused leadership candidate and Edmonton-Centre MLA Laurie Blakeman of being part of a secret conspiracy to merge the Liberal Party with the Alberta Party.

Commenting on a recent post on this blog, Mr. Mackie, who is also Campaign Director to leadership candidate Bruce Payne, accused Ms. Blakeman of being part of a “super secret [sic] cabel” of Liberals who want to merge their party with the Alberta Party. Mr. Mackie then accused Ms. Blakeman, who has served as an MLA since 1997, of being a “stealth merger candidate.”

Responding to the accusations via email, Ms. Blakeman wrote that, “This cabal is so super secret that I have never heard of it.”

“I have no secret strategy to merge the two parties.  I have said publicly that I believe the two parties will be the same within 10 years.  I think that’s pretty obvious that one or the other will prevail.  I just couldn’t tell you which one, my crystal ball is in for repairs,” wrote Ms. Blakeman.

She continued, “I am being very clear that I am the candidate who believes changing public policy is about building and participating in coalitions.”

“If Neil Mackie thinks being willing to work with others, cooperate on issue strategies, and bring in outsiders to affect change is a big bad thing…well I don’t.  I’m here to change the world and I have some experience in doing that so I’m sticking with what I know!”

Alberta Party responds
When contacted via email, Alberta Party Vice-President Brian Thiessen wrote that, “it would have to be a super secret cabal, as the Alberta Party certainly doesn’t know anything about it.”

Mr. Thiessen then wrote that perhaps Mr. Mackie’s “super secret cabel” was “a sub-committee of the “ALP Committee of Awesome“. Or is it the “Awesomeness Committee”? Or maybe Laurie’s Secret Cabal and the Awesome Liberals have now merged to form the “Secret Cabal of Awesomeness” which will at some future date attempt to discuss further merger with the Alberta Party?”

“ALP members and certain MLA’s like Laurie have made no secret of their wish to join the Alberta Party, and many others may be attracted to some or all of the Alberta Party’s moderate, yet fiscally conservative message, as may many moderate PC’s. But the Alberta Party has no interest in merging with the Alberta Liberal Party,” wrote Mr. Thiessen.

The Liberals are scheduled to choose a new leader on September 10, 2011.

18 replies on “liberal mla accused of leading “super secret cabal.””

An ALP – AP merge under the latter’s name? Instant official opposition status for the Alberta Party and a legitimate shot at turning the next provincial election into a three way race? Ending the chance that vote splitting between the ALP and AP in the next election (especially in Edmonton) will give the ruling PCs enough MLAs to run their consecutive win streak to an even dozen? Heck, why would the Alberta Party have any interest in that?

Hmm… Great.

Well, I guess the only thing to do is go on fundraising, registering members, and building constituency associations.

Keep up the snarky attacks Dave and Brian – I’m sure the Alberta Party grassroots supporters love it. So refreshing.

Liberals attacking Liberals? Who woudda thunk it? Great job, Mackie. I hope your guys gets elected then the Liberals can finally get driven into the ground.

I think Dave has missed two things: 1) no one is refuting the proposition that Laurie has knifed two leaders and 2) that the “super secret cabal” is a West Wing reference (see Josh talking about a super secret plan to fight inflation). Seeing that this is a politcal blog that political people read I’m surprised both points one and two were missed and not caught. Oh well.

And, Mackie’s current blog post refers to Laurie as a, quote, “unapologetic feminist.”

Whoa, burn! He has a point though: I have never heard Laurie apologize for being a feminist. It’s like she’s not even ashamed of it or something.

Most of this I am going to ignore, but your right Scott. Laurie is an unapologetic feminist. It is something she should be proud of and something I admire about her as should be clear from the context. Who would assume that is a bad thing, I don’t.

I will not refute the proposition that Laurie has “knifed two leaders”.

Because she’s gotten the best of Klein and Stelmach.

The real enemy of the ALP and ALC has been their inability to act and to quell infighting. They love witch hunts, I can attest to that.

Laurie Blakeman and Neil Mackie barely tolerated each other. This is a great attempt at inside baseball by the ALP to try and undermine the uptick that the Alberta Party has saw.

So long Mackie, I hope your copy of Warren Kinsella’s book still keeps you warm at night.

More power to her if she has tried for a merger! It’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard in Alberta politics as of late. I hope it’s not just a rumour.

Leave a Reply to Clarke Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *