I take a few days off and there’s a million new candidate nomination updates.
It sure feels like election season in Alberta. Or maybe it’s just Leadership Review season.
Ok. Let’s get on with the updates.
Tim Hoven and Jodie Gateman have been disqualified from the United Conservative Party nomination races in Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre and Cardston-Siksika.
The right-wing municipal politicians were challenging two high-profile Jason Kenney loyalists – Government House Leader and Environment & Parks Minister Jason Nixon and Deputy Government House Leader Joseph Schow.
The party says they were disqualified because of controversial posts they shared and liked on social media.
People close to Gateman’s campaign say it was because she was accused of reposting conspiracy theories on her social media accounts.
They tell me that party staff even asked her if she was in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. (The person I spoke with said she was visiting family in Las Vegas).
Disqualifying them avoids negative media attention from unwanted bozo-eruptions and has the added bonus of protecting two Kenney loyalists who were by most accounts considered vulnerable in the nomination.
They also both happened to be endorsed by Kenney rivals Brian Jean and Drew Barnes.
Without nomination races to keep them busy, there’s more time to focus on the April 9 leadership review in Red Deer.
Gateman is now shifting her attention to getting as many of her supporters to vote against Kenney at the April 9 leadership review in Red Deer.
They are renting buses.
Maybe someone will call in and ask Kenney about it on his debut radio show this weekend?
A new poll from ThinkHQ shows that 64 per cent of Albertans and 59 per cent of UCP voters want Kenney gone.
More on that later. Now back to the nomination updates.
For the UCP:
- It hasn’t been announced yet, but is appears that Calgary-Shaw MLA Rebecca Schulz and Calgary-South East MLA Matt Jones will be acclaimed as the UCP candidates in their ridings.
- MLA Josephine Pon is running for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Beddington. Pon was first elected in 2019.
- MLA Mickey Amery is running for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Cross. Amery was first elected in 2019.
- MLA Peter Singh is running for the UCP nomination in Calgary-East. Singh was first elected in 2019.
- Legislative Assembly Speaker MLA Nathan Cooper is running for the UCP nomination in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills. Cooper was first elected in 2015.
- MLA Dan Williams is running for the UCP nomination in Peace River. Williams was first elected in 2019.
- Service Alberta Minister and MLA Nate Glubish is running for the UCP nomination in Strathcona-Sherwood Park. Glubish was first elected in 2019.
For the NDP:
-
Dave Cournoyer and Rakhi Pancholi the day before the 2019 election was called. MLA Irfan Sabir has been nominated to run for re-election in the recently renamed Calgary-Bhullar-McCall. Sabir was first elected in 2015.
- MLA Rakhi Pancholi has announced her plans to run for the NDP nomination in Edmonton-Whitemud. Pancholi was first elected in 2019.
- MLA Christina Gray is running for the NDP nomination in Edmonton-Mill Woods. Gray was first elected in 2015 and served as Minister of Labour from 2015 to 2019.
- Respected energy analyst Samir Kayande is now the NDP candidate in Calgary-Elbow.
- Canmore town councillor Tonya Foubert is the fourth candidate to join the NDP nomination contest in Banff-Kananaskis.
- Director Business Renewables Centre Canada director Nagwan Al-Guneid is the second candidate to enter the NDP nomination race in Calgary-Glenmore. They join communications consultant Jennifer Burgess in the race.
- Registered Nurse Diana Batten is running for the NDP nomination in Calgary-Acadia.
- Rosman Valencia is now the only candidate seeking the NDP nomination in Calgary-East after Alison Karim-McSwiney withdrew from the contest.
- Registered Nurse Chantelle Hosseiny and paramedic Cameron Heenan are seeking the NDP nomination in Leduc-Beaumont.
- Teacher James Grondin is the second candidate to enter the NDP nomination race in Morinville-St. Albert. Former Sturgeon County Councillor Karen Shaw joined the race in Dec. 2021.
Here are the upcoming nomination meetings that have been scheduled:
- Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland NDP: March 12, 2022
- Lesser Slave Lake NDP: March 13, 2022
- Calgary-Shaw UCP: March 21, 2022
- Calgary-South East UCP: March 21, 2022
- Cardston-Siksika UCP: March 21, 2022
- Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre UCP: March 23, 2022
- Calgary-Edgemont UCP: March 24, 2022
- Calgary-Klein UCP: March 24, 2022
- Drumheller-Stettler UCP: March 24, 2022
- Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville UCP: March 24, 2022
- Peace River UCP: March 24, 2022
- St. Albert NDP: March 24, 2022
- Calgary-Klein NDP: March 26, 2022,
- Banff-Kananaskis NDP: March 27, 2022
- Calgary-Beddington UCP: March 29, 2022
- Calgary-East UCP: March 29, 2022
- Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills UCP: March 29, 2022
- Strathcona-Sherwood Park UCP: March 29, 2022
- Camrose NDP: April 3, 2022
- Edmonton-Whitemud NDP: April 7, 2022
- Calgary-East NDP: April 9,2022
- Edmonton-Mill Woods NDP: April 10, 2022
5 replies on “Nomination Updates: UCP cancels rumbles in Rocky and Cardston, disqualifies Tim Hoven and Jodie Gateman”
Asking a potential candidate who may have been known to travel to US around a certain time could just be good vetting, which any party should do to avoid later possible embarrassment.
However, I wonder if in these cases it went beyond that and party staff were looking for anything to disqualify them. It would be hard to know for sure unless the details of the social media were publicly known.
Of course, every party has their own values and perspectives, so a social media platform that might not appeal to supporters of another party, might not be regarded the same by UCP members or supporters.
At the least, there seems to be some change in what is or isn’t considered acceptable for a potential UCP candidate and I am not it is not very clear to anyone how or why this has changed. It is also suspicious these people were challenging important people loyal to the Premier. I suspect these new rules, if they are even that, would be applied less rigorously if different people were involved.
This could easily backfire on Kenney. He may save his MLA’s, but these disqualified potential candidates now have more time on their hands and perhaps a even stronger motivation to campaign against him.
[…] Political Blogger Dave Cournoyer keeps track party candidate nominations regularly on his Daveberta.ca blog, as in this recent post. […]
They were absolutly looking for anyway to disqualify these candidates. This is Kenney playing dirty but I guess conservatives see is this as being a good “tactician”. Jason Nixon is way more of a “Bozo” canidate than Tim Hoven and has way more controversies in his past. I have to wonder how much Kenney is willing to destroy democracy within his own party in order to remain in power and if it will catch up with him by causing his own party to implode with the divisions he has created.
Does Rakhi Pancholi, NDP, have your endorsement in the upcoming election too Dave?
[…] noted, accurately, that “similar disqualifications were conducted under the previous UCP Leader, in ridings like […]