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Alberta Politics

sue huff acting leader of the alberta party.

Former Edmonton Public School Trustee Sue Huff is now the Acting Leader of the Alberta Party. Ms. Huff replaces Edwin Erickson, who became leader in late 2009 and announced his intentions to step down at the party’s Annual General Meeting in October. The Alberta Party is preparing to hold a leadership contest that will take place next spring.

The first set of policies ratified by participants of their first convention were also released this week. The party is currently in the process of establishing and organizing constituency associations across the province (founding meetings are being held this week in Edmonton-Centre, Leduc-Beaumont-Devon, Calgary-Mountain View, and Edmonton-Glenora).

(I shared some closing remarks at the Alberta Party’s first policy conference, which you can read here.)

17 replies on “sue huff acting leader of the alberta party.”

Nice move to pick Huff and pit her against Danielle Smith. I still think however the Alberta Party and the Alberta Liberals ought to merge. The Grits have money and structure and volunteers and the Alberta Party has the sexy name and no baggage.

A question now, are they organizing in those select constituencies based on some “priority” list or is it just wherever they happen to have 3 or 4 volunteers to start a constituency association between them?

G.O.R:

The CA organization is actually being done in strategic order, based on a combination of local strength and where we feel it will play best for us tactically. That said, we have targeted 20 for the new year, and then ten a month after that, again based on priority. We have a CA Organizing committee, led by Brian Thiessen from our Board, who are working on this tirelessly.

If you want more information, please email michael@albertaparty.ca.

Chester:
I’d love to hear your thought son why you think this work is irrelevant. Email me anytime at president@albertaparty.ca

Bob:
We are mounting our attack from the moderate middle, but we ARE doing it on the backs of unicorns, so I can see why you might think it looks to be a bit warm and fluffy.

Chris LaBossiere
Alberta Party President

Because you’re small time, Chris.

You’re a political party of disaffected organizers that offer nothing but listening. Even after your policy convention, you stand for nothing, and at the end of the day, the best you can do is just throw the election to another party by splitting the vote.

Frankly, it’s insulting. Tories on the outs, Liberals on the outs, getting together and thinking they can just create an unprincipled public opinion poll government. Philosophically, what do you offer that the Tories don’t? That the Liberals don’t? Political parties should advance causes, and move the public. Not find the parade and declare themselves grand marshal.

My email is chstrj@gmail.com. Feel free to email ME if you want to take this off line, but I don’t have a lot of interest in explaining to you further why I think your party sucks in a venue without a rational audience. I suspect you might be in a position where you’ve made up your mind.

The Alberta Party should be courting Raj Sherman and Dave Taylor to become its first two MLAs. Further, I agree with GOR that the Alberta Party should be in merger discussions with the official opposition, and for the reasons GOR has succinctly stated above. The Alberta Party should be acting on the Liberal Party’s “Let’s Talk” invitation (see daveberta’s July 7, 2010 post).

As a counterpoint to Chester’s opinion, I’ll just chime in and say that I find the Alberta Party’s new approach quite refreshing. At first I thought the non-partisanship was a strange jumping off point, but seeing the positions taken and the players involved, I’m fairly excited about what they’re offering to Albertans. I’m all for the thrust and parry of ideas, and I think once they have MLAs the Alberta Party will lose some of that “above the fray” image they are currently projecting, but if all they become is a new group of well organized centrist MLAs, well that still fills a huge void in Alberta’s political spectrum right now. A hole that would seem to need filling, but we’ll have to wait and see what the voting public has to say about that.

Edomonton-Centre and Calgary Mountain View… Now I get it. Try and split the vote of arguably the two most notable Liberals (David Swann and Laurie Blakeman) in the province and hope they both loose. That way the Liberals will die sooner and you can come in and be everyone’s saviour. Pretty strategic…and/or pathetic.

Chester obviously hasn’t taken the time to read the policies that came out of the convention.

“Political parties should advance causes, and move the public. Not find the parade and declare themselves grand marshal.”

WTF?

Anyone who is reading anything more into what Sue is saying has issues of their own that need to be worked out.

A couple of points.

First, Ms. Huff is an engaging and articulate interim option, but the real question for the Alberta Party is the contest for a real and permanent leader. Without a real race involving serious candidates the party will go nowhere.

Secondly, the last thing the Alberta Party should do is ghettoize itself with the Alberta Liberals, much less the NDP. Both have proven themselves unelectable over decades of trying, as they simply haven’t been able to either appeal to enough people or organize well enough. Picking off their people or their donors is one thing, but there is no advantage is moving into the cell to take up residence.

The Alberta Party has been around since 1985, that’s 2 and a half decades of trying, and it hasn’t elected anyone.

I heard a rumour, just today, from 2 separate sources actually, that some Alberta Party people who also happen to be Alberta Liberal members will be at the Liberal AGM this Saturday in Red Deer and will attempt to install some of their own on the Grit party board. If that is in fact true (we’ll have to wait and see, I suppose), it could allow the Alberta Party to later take over or annex the Alberta Liberals. The other thing it would do is it would negate the “above the fray” characterization as now they would be every bit as partisan and perhaps every bit as calculating or “scheming” as the rest of us.

Chris L. actually sort of admits this (that they’re shedding their “we’re not like the rest” cloaks in his reply (“where we feel it will play best for us tactically”).

It’ll be interesting to watch how things unfold if in fact there’s anything in the works.

Health Care isn’t the only issue that is turned upside down in this province. How about this?

So far the WRA and NDP both support building the PC promised Police College but 5 years after that promise, still no action!

Check out the website for more info.

I’m thrilled to hear that Sue has been chosen as the leader of what I think is an exciting and viable new party. She’s intelligent, articulate and principled, and carving out a space that moves beyond the unproductive partisan nastiness currently alienating so many good people from politics.

I was impressed with the policy conference last weekend and, assuming the trajectory stays its course, I am comfortable giving my time and energy to try to start working with this remarkable group of people.

@Chester

So, they’re trying to…
“create an unprincipled public opinion poll government.”
–> What the hell is democracy if this ISN’T what anyone’s forming? The last time I checked, the electorate has some principles and they seem to know what they’re doing, and even if they don’t, it doesn’t matter, because we’re supposed to be living in a democratic regime. Unless you’d prefer that those of us who ARE ‘principled’ just step up and run the show? Why let those little ‘unprincipled’ people run anything?

“Philosophically, what do you offer that the Tories don’t? That the Liberals don’t?”
–> I’m not entirely sure yet that the Alberta Party does offer anything different from the others, but why shouldn’t they be given the chance to? Because status quo is so vitally important?

“Political parties should advance causes, and move the public.”
–> This is blatantly wrong. A political party is for people who, though they may have specific causes that they fight for, want overall to participate in a group of generally like-minded people who all are trying to advance something bigger, not a specific cause of any kind. If you want something that advances causes, you’re in entirely the wrong field – try a pressure group.

For the record, I’m not a member and I don’t even know if I necessarily support the party yet, but your arrogant and misplaced comments made me want to respond. Maybe you prefer your country with a large helping of dictatorship, judging by your comments about the terrible nature of an “unprincipled public opinion poll government”, but I personally prefer the democracy entree.

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