Three quick candidate nomination updates this morning:
- Former school principal and school board trustee Fred Kreiner defeated former county councillor Lavone Olson to win the Alberta NDP nomination in West Yellowhead. Kreiner has worked a teacher, vice-principal and principal at schools in Edson and Jasper and served two terms as a school trustee in the Greater North Central Francophone Education Region.
- Dharminder Premi will challenge Chantelle de Jonge for the United Conservative Party nomination in Chestermere-Strathmore at a December 17 vote. Premi is President of SoftForward Technologies Inc. and is a public member of the Rockyview County Subdivision & Development Appeal Board / Enforcement Review Committee. Incumbent UCP MLA Leela Aheer announced in October that she will not run for re-election under the UCP banner but has not publicly said if she will run as an Independent or for another party.
- Mattie McMillan announced she plans to once again seek the NDP nomination in Calgary-Klein. McMillan ran for the party nomination in March 2022 that chose Marilyn North Peigan. North Peigan was removed as the NDP candidate in November 2022.
Here are the scheduled upcoming nomination votes, some of which I profiled earlier this week:
- December 9 & 10 – Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock UCP
- December 10, 11, 12 – Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul UCP
- December 11 – Edmonton-South UCP
- December 17 – Calgary-North NDP
- December 17 – Chestermere-Strathmore UCP
- December 20 – Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview UCP
I am building a list of candidates running for party nominations, so if you are seeking a nomination and would like you name added to the list please let me know. Thanks!
Liberals make interim leader permanent
The Alberta Liberal Party announced that interim leader John Roggeveen, who has served in that position since March 2021, is now the party’s permanent leader.
The Calgary-based lawyer and long-time party supporter stepped into the interim role three months after David Khan stepped down in November 2020.
The party’s August 2022 leadership race was a bust when no candidates were approved to run for the party leadership.
Roggeveen has served on the party’s executive and was a candidate in Calgary-Shaw in 2004, 2008 and 2012, Calgary-Elbow in 2015 and Calgary-Fish Creek in 2019.
Following a disappointing result in the 2019 election, the party failed to elect any MLAs to the Alberta Legislature for the first time since 1982.
Barry Cooper and the Alberta Sovereignty Act
A lot of people reacting to University of Calgary political science professor Barry Cooper’s comments about Alberta separatism yesterday on CBC’s The Current. Back in September, I published a column on the Daveberta Substack about Dr. Cooper’s long history of separatist comments and his role as an architect of the Alberta Sovereignty Act.
