Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race Ed Stelmach Jim Dinning Ted Morton

everybody’s third choice. one year later.

Today is the one-year anniversary of Ed Stelmach‘s selection as leader of Alberta’s 36-year old Progressive Conservative government (and also a first-anniversary for anniversary for Stephane Dion). On December 2, 2006, Stelmach came from third place to defeat Jim Dinning and Ted Morton in the final weekend of the Alberta PC leadership selection.

Stelmach’s year as Tory Premier has been the most shaky the Tories have witnessed in a long time. I could use this post to write about Ed Stelmach’s Tories and their many, many missteps and missed opportunities over the past year (the Calgary-Elbow by-election, EUB spy scandal, a damning Auditor General’s report, waffling on the royalty review, shutting down debate on Bill 46, taking 4 months to deal with Craig Chandler in Calgary-Egmont, the rest of the Top 10, etc), but instead, I’ll wish Premier Stelmach congrats on surprsing many of us by surviving one year.

In conclusion, I will leave you with everyone’s favorite theme song from the 2006 Alberta PC leadership race:

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race Alberta Tories Campaign Finance Jim Dinning

jim who?

Oh yeah, that guy…

Defeated former Tory Dauphin-child Jim Dinning released a list of the names of individuals and corporations who contributed to his failed Alberta PC leadership bid in Fall 2006.

Though it’s only a partial list that doesn’t specify individual contribution amounts, it’s a huge list that totals over $1.7 million in donations to Team Dinning.

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race Democracy

the $5 challenge.

From interlocutor. I recommend you read the full post.

Further afterthought: someone commented on this blog earlier that giving the Tories $5 is no big deal, since you can subversively give 5-10 times that much to the Liberals or NDs. I hereby challenge everyone who gave $5 to the Tories on that basis to make that contribution to an opposition party which best matches their values so as to undo the damage done by giving money and validation to the one-party-state given.

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race Alberta Tories Ed Stelmach Ralph Klein

something about a new premier?

To millions of Canadians (and maybe a million Albertans), Ed Stelmach is not a familiar name. When the 13 year political veteran was selected as the Leader of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta last weekend, this quiet little known political entity was thown into the political spotlight.

For those of you not totally familiar with Premier-designate Ed Stelmach’s background, here’s a bit of it…

A farmer from south of the Village of Andrew, Stelmach served as Reeve of Lamont County until being elected MLA for the newly created Vegreville-Viking riding in 1993. The election saw Stelmach defeat two-term NDP MLA Derek Fox (MLA for Vegreville 1986-1993). Stelmach was re-elected in Vegreville-Viking in 1997 and 2001. In 2004, Stelmach ran in and was elected MLA for the newly created Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville riding.

After entering Ralph Klein’s Cabinet, Stelmach served as Minister of Agriculture from 1997 to 1999, Minister of Infrastructure from 1999 to 2004, and Minister of Intergovernment and International Affairs from 2004 to 2006. Years of Cabinet experience aside, I seriously cannot name anything that Stelmach did while he was a Cabinet Minister. Can someone help me on this one?

One of the challenges that Stelmach faces as Premier is articulating a vision for which direction he would like to lead Alberta. Stelmach’s campaign, which was largely vague on policy, was as far as I can tell based on “Honest Ed” or “Steady Eddie” being a moderate conservative comprimise candidate between social conservative Ted Morton and Corporate Calgary Dauphin Jim Dinning. This said, I have nearly no idea where Stelmach stands on most issues.

It should be interesting to see just how different Stelmach is from Klein as Premier and if Stelmach is able to heal the body-wounds his party delivered to itself during this race in preparation for the next General Election.

Speaking of the next General Election, since 1993 the Alberta PC’s have centered their image around a single man – Ralph Klein. Since 1993, many Albertans voted for “Ralph’s Team” or “Ralph” himself not knowing who their actual PC candidate was (it’s like an intense form of leader-based elections). Also, the PC Party generally polled lower support than Ralph Klein. With Klein out of the picture, can the Alberta PC’s survive once his card is removed from the deck? Can Stelmach sucessfully replace Ralph Klein as the central figure of the PC Party? Will Stelmach be able to appeal to the broad cross-section of Albertans that Klein was able to?

Also, it should be interesting to see what Stelmach’s new cabinet looks like. Which MLA’s are rewarded and which are put to pasture. As well as what the configuration of the Cabinet Ministries look like as there is a good chance that some Ministries may be merged to create a smaller Cabinet (which I believe currently has 23 Ministers).

Should be interesting…

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race

calgarians riot in the streets.

or something.

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race Alberta Tories Dave Hancock Ed Stelmach Jim Dinning Mark Norris Ted Morton

selected alberta pc leadership selection results…

Here are the main and selected riding results from yesterday’s Alberta PC leadership selection…

First Ballot
Jim Dinning – 29,470
Ted Morton – 25,614
Ed Stelmach – 14,967
Lyle Oberg- 11,638
Dave Hancock – 7595
Mark Norris – 6789
Victor Doerksen – 873
Gary McPherson – 744

Second Ballot
Ed Stelmach – 51,764
Jim Dinning – 51,282
Ted Morton – 41, 243

Third Ballot
Ed Stelmach – 77, 577
Jim Dinning – 55,509
(Morton to Stelmach – 25,813)
(Morton to Dinning – 4,227)

Here are some interesting selected riding results…

Calgary Elbow (Ralph Klein’s riding)
First Ballot
Jim Dinning – 1,890
Ted Morton – 656
Ed Stelmach – 360

Second Ballot
Jim Dinning – 2,004
Ed Stelmach – 747

Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville (Stelmach’s riding)
First Ballot
Ed Stelmach – 4,156
Ted Morton – 316
Jim Dinning – 170

Second Ballot
Ed Stelmach – 4,382
Jim Dinning – 193

Little Bow
First Ballot
Ted Morton – 1,784
Jim Dinning – 382
Ed Stelmach – 351

Second Ballot
Ed Stelmach – 1,518
Jim Dinning – 515

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race Ed Stelmach Jim Dinning Ted Morton

premier ed stelmach…?

Say hello to Premier Ed Stelmach on the third ballot…

Most recent second ballot results of the Alberta PC race…

Jim Dinning – 44.000
Ed Stelmach – 36,000
Ted Morton – 32,000

Wow…

First, Stephane Dion… now maybe Ed Stelmach… it’s a good night for third place finishers…

I may or may not be heading off to the PC party at the Aviation Centre…

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race 2006 Federal Liberal Leadership Race

presumtive nominee…

Just as the Federal Liberals are holding their leadership selection today, the Alberta PC’s are out voting for their second and third ballot choices for their new leader.

I have no clue who is going to win this one. Last weekend’s results on their first ballot resulted in a Jim Dinning-Ted Morton-Ed Stelmach playing feild.

Today’s second-third ballot results will depend on a lot of things.
– How many memberships were the camps able to sell this week.
– How effective are the defeated candidates in getting their networks out to support endorsed candidates (Dave Hancock, Mark Norris, and Lyle Oberg’s endorsement of Ed Stelmach).
– How effective will the camps be in getting out their vote today.

I guess we’ll see. Premier Jim Dinning? Premier Ed Stelmach? Or Premier Ted Morton?

Categories
2006 Alberta PC Leadership Race Alberta Tories Ed Stelmach Jim Dinning Ted Morton

debate? how about mini-put?

The three last remaining Alberta PC leadership candidates standing – Ed Stelmach, Ted Morton, and Jim Dinning – had it out tonight in a televised debate. Now, one might say,:

“Daveberta, you’re a keen observer of the albertus politicnus. What did you think of the debate?”

Well, my answer to that question is that I didn’t watch the debate.

I spent my evening having a blast at West Edmonton Mall’s Glow-in-the-Dark Mini-put! If you haven’t been, I do recommend. It’s quite fun.

From what I can tell about the debate, it wasn’t exactly exciting (I may be wrong?).

Jim Dinning went on the attack against Ted Morton. This isn’t overly surprising as Dinning has been in desperate-attack mode against Morton since only receiving 30% support on last Saturday’s PC leadership vote. All you have to do is watch and listen to Dinning to feel the sense that he’s extremely desperate to save his political future and pull off a win. Check out this video of Dinning’s rally speech to supporters earlier this week to see what I mean.

Though I’m really at a loss as to predict what the results of Saturday’s vote will be, it should be interesting to see how much support Ed Stelmach has been able to gain over the past week. He seems like the only of the three to have some sort of momentum…

As for the other candidates, I will have my final pre-second/third ballot up tomorrow.