Categories
Alberta Politics

No surprises as UCP wins big in Fort McMurray-Conklin and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake by-elections

United Conservative Party candidates were elected in by-elections held in two traditionally strong conservative voting districts on July 12, 2018. Both districts were held by the UCP before the by-elections were called and voters in both districts elected Wildrose Party candidates in the 2015 election.

In Fort McMurray-Conklin, Laila Goodridge soundly defeated New Democratic Party candidate Jane Stroud, a three-term Wood Buffalo municipal councillor, with a 45 percent margin of victory. In Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, one of the strongest conservative voting districts in Alberta, Devin Dreeshen was elected with 81 percent of the vote.

The NDP was nowhere close to victory in either district. In Fort McMurray-Conklin, Stroud finished with 29 percent, only one-point lower her party’s share of the vote in the 2015 election. NDP candidate Nicole Mooney finished a distant second with 9 percent of the vote in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, but this still represented her party’s second best ever showing in this district since it was created in 1993.

With 7 percent of the vote in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, Alberta Party candidate Abigail Douglass finished only slightly higher than this district’s past Alberta Party candidate Danielle Klooster, who finished with 6.2 percent of the vote in the 2015 election. In Fort McMurray-Conklin, Alberta Party candidate Sid Fayad finished in a distant third with 2.7 percent.

The Liberals barely registered on the radar in these by-elections, with Fort McMurray-Conklin candidate Robin Le Fevre earning 1.1 percent and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake candidate Nick Jansen finishing with 0.9 percent.

Here are the results:

Fort McMurray-Conklin 
Laila Goodridge, UCP – 2,635 (65.8%)
Jane Stroud, NDP – 1,181 (29.5%)
Sid Fayad, AP – 110 (2.7%)
Robin La Fevre, Lib – 44 (1.1%)
Brian Deheer, Grn – 29 (0.7%)

Innisfail-Sylvan Lake
Devin Dreeshen, UCP – 8,033 (81.7%)
Nicole Mooney, NDP – 907 (9.2%)
Abigail Douglass, AP – 729 (7.4%)
Nick Jansen, Lib – 93 (0.9%)
David Inscho, Ind – 63 (0.6%)

Here are the 2018 by-election results compared to previous results in these two districts from the time they were formed:

Fort McMurray-Conklin Election Results 2012-2018
Fort McMurray-Conklin Election Results 2012-2018 (click to enlarge)
Innisfail-Sylvan Lake Election Results 1993-2018
Innisfail-Sylvan Lake Election Results 1993-2018 (click to enlarge)
Categories
Alberta Politics

UCP candidate’s ties to Trump campaign caps off sleepy by-elections in Fort McMurray-Conklin and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake

Photo: Sid Fayad, Laila Goodridge, Jane Stroud, Nicole Mooney, Abigail Douglass, Devin Dreeshen.

Voters will head to the polls tomorrow to elect new MLAs in two relatively sleepy by-elections. The two districts, Fort McMurray-Conklin and Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, were both held by United Conservative Party MLAs before they became vacant and voters are expected to have re-elected two UCP candidates after the polls close at 8:00 p.m. on July 12, 2018.

In the final day before voting day, an investigation by Vice.com revealed that Innisfail-Sylvan Lake UCP candidate Devin Dreeshen, son of local Conservative Member of Parliament Earl Dreeshen, was a campaign volunteer for Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.

As part of the investigation, Vice discovered a November 2016 photo of Dreeshen at an invite-only election night event in New York City sporting a red ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball cap and raising a drink to Trump’s victory.

According to Vice, “On and off between February and November of 2016, Dreeshen and his colleague Matthew McBain followed Trump around the United States training volunteers, knocking on doors and even shadowing Ivanka Trump for some reason.” The ‘my experience‘ section of Dreeshen’s website makes no mention of his time as a Trump volunteer south of the border.

When Vice writer Hadeel Abdel-Nabi questioned Dreeshen about his activities with the Trump campaign at a by-election event in Sylvan Lake, the UCP candidate is reported to have fled to the bathroom and was not seen again.

Innisfail-Sylvan Lake New Democratic Party candidate Nicole Mooney faced criticism for pro-life views she held in in 2014 but says she no longer holds. Mooney, a Sylvan Lake-resident who teaches at a Catholic high school in Red Deer, was reported to have led a field trip with dozens of her students to the March for Life event in Edmonton.

While anti-abortion views on women’s reproductive rights are certainly a minority opinion in the NDP caucus these days, these views are likely fairly mainstream in this rural central Alberta district.

Postmedia columnist Rick Bell pounced on Mooney’s pro-life leanings as a sign of NDP hypocrisy. But Bell neglected to mention that while Mooney has not made her views part of her campaign, a pro-life activist group has launched an effort to nominate “52 pro-life candidates” to stand in the next election, presumably for the UCP. According to Press Progress, the RightNow initiative is led by Catherine Gallagher, who previously work for Jason Kenney as a staffer in Ottawa.

The NDP scored a solid candidate when they recruited three-term Wood Buffalo municipal councillor Jane Stroud to carry their banner in Fort McMurray-Conklin. Stroud is well-respected and has good name recognition in the district. She has also earned the endorsement of three of her Wood Buffalo council colleagues and First Nations leaders in the sprawling northeast Alberta district.

UCP candidate Laila Goodridge was the target of criticism at the beginning of the campaign when Stroud accused her of being a ‘fly-in, fly-out’ candidate. A Fort McMurray native, Goodridge spent much of her adult life working as a political staffer outside of region, including as the Wildrose Party candidate in Grande Prairie-Wapiti in the 2015 provincial election. Her ties to the community and her connection to former MLA Brian Jean, who she worked for as an organizer of his 2017 UCP leadership campaign, were obviously enough of an advantage to help her win a crowded contest for the UCP nomination.

While she is the favourite to win, Goodridge appeared to be managing expectations last week, warning UCP voters that a low-voter turnout and ‘special interest groups’ tied to the NDP could hurt the UCP on July 12. Goodridge’s ‘special interest group’ comment offended some voters who believed she may have been referring to First Nations leaders supporting Stroud. 

But the incident that appeared to get the most attention during these by-elections was  when CBC reported about a racial slur made by Alberta Party candidate Sid Fayad five years ago on Facebook. Fayad apologized for the comment.

Meanwhile, the decision by Greyhound to end passenger and freight transportation operations in Alberta, an issue that will actually have a big impact on a lot of rural communities in these two districts, emerged late in the campaign. Stroud issued a statement in response to Greyhound’s withdrawal, but it was likely too late to become a decisive issue in these by-elections.  

Voting stations are open on Thursday, July 12, 2018 from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.


Here are a list of the by-election candidates and their social media links:

Fort McMurray-Conklin
Alberta Party – Sid Fayad [Twitter]
Green Party – Brian Deheer
Liberal – Robin Le Fevre [Twitter]
New Democratic Party – Jane Stroud [FacebookTwitter]
United Conservative Party – Laila Goodridge [FacebookTwitter]

Innisfail-Sylvan Lake
Alberta Party – Abigail Douglass [FacebookTwitter]
Liberal – Nick Jansen [Twitter]
Independent – David Inscho
New Democratic Party – Nicole Mooney [FacebookTwitter]
United Conservative Party – Devin Dreeshen [FacebookTwitter]

Categories
Alberta Politics

Green Party candidate drops out and endorses Liberal candidate in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake by-election

Green Party of Alberta candidate Marco Reid has dropped out of the Innisfail-Sylvan Lake by-election and tweeted his endorsement of Liberal Party candidate Nick Jansen.

Reid is the president of the Green Party of Alberta.

Nick Jansen Liberal Innisfail Sylvan Lake
Nick Jansen

Jansen is the Liberal Party’s former vice-president of policy and a current policy advisor to party leader Dave Khan. Both Reid and Jansen live in Calgary.

While this may seem like an odd move, a Green Party endorsement of a Liberal candidate is not unprecedented.

In 2015, the Green Party endorsed Liberal candidate Michael Dawe in Red Deer-North and Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman in Edmonton-Centre. The Alberta Party also endorsed Blakeman in that election.

‘Fly in, Fly out candidate’

At her campaign launch last week, Fort McMurray-Conklin New Democratic Party by-election candidate Jane Stroud accused United Cosnervative Party candidate Laila Goodridge of being a “fly in, fly out” candidate. Stroud, a Wood Buffalo municipal councillor, took aim at Goodridge for her career as a political staffer in Edmonton and Ottawa and comments made when she ran for the Wildrose Party in Grande Prairie-Wapiti in the 2015 election.

Goodridge was born and raised in Fort McMurray and has worked as a political staffer in Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa, including as a constituency assistant for former Calgary-Centre MP Joan Crockatt. She was director of field operations for former Fort McMurray-Conklin MLA Brian Jean’s campaign for the leadership of the UCP in 2017.

Former NDP MLA on the campaign trail

Service Alberta Minister Brian Malkinson, NDP candidate Nicole Mooney and former NDP MLA John Younie.
Service Alberta Minister Brian Malkinson, NDP candidate Nicole Mooney and former NDP MLA John Younie.

Photos of former NDP MLA John Younie have been featured prominently in tweets posted by Innisfail-Sylvan Lake NDP candidate Nicole Mooney.

Younie served as MLA for Edmonton-Glengarry from 1986 to 1989. While in the Assembly, he served as Official Opposition critic for Forestry, Lands and Wildlife, the Environment, and Public Works. He was unseated by Liberal leader and former Edmonton mayor Laurence Decore in the 1989 election.

He was the NDP candidate in Rocky Mountain House in 1979, which at that time included the Town of Sylvan Lake.

Independent Alberta Advantage candidate

David Inscho is running as an Independent candidate in the Innisfail-Sylvan Lake by-election. Inscho is president of the Alberta Advantage Party and the former president of the Wildrose Party association in Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills. The AAP is in the process of becoming an officially recognized political party.

The UCP candidates are expected to win both by-elections on July 12, 2018.