daveberta.ca - Alberta Politics and Elections

Looks like Lyle Oberg just held a press conference and endorsed Ed Stelmach.

If I were Jim Dinning, I’d be worried.

The results of the Alberta PC Party’s internal party selection are a bit surprising. A party divided is what is apparent.

In retrospect, I clearly underestimated how much support Jim Dinning would get with 10-years of planning, 36 MLA’s and the Calgary Mafia supporting him, a new hair-do, a pair of contact lens, and the control of many of the internal party mechanisms. Geez, even Paul Martin could pull it off…

Ted Morton clearly performed a little better than I had expected in a way. I knew his support was solid and committed; I just wasn’t sure how large it was and how close he would be to Jim Dinning. The so-con vote showed up. The ghost of Reform is back.

Months ago I was predicting that Ed Stelmach would make second or third place in this race. And then he fell off the radar. Apparently, he must have been busy selling PC Party membership in rural Alberta. As Larry Johnsrude reports, the Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville poll results showed an Ed Stelmach-2,461 to Jim Dinning-144 split in Stelmach’s riding (detailed riding-by-riding results can be found here). But even with Dave Hancock‘s endorsement last night, Ed Stelmach remains “Ed Who?” for many Albertans. Will Ed Stelmach stay on for the second-ballot? Will he make a deal with Ted Morton or Jim Dinning? Is Ed Stelmach the Rick Orman of the race?

Speaking of Dave Hancock’s endorsement of Ed Stelmach and their Northern Alliance, it should be interesting to see if Mark Norris joins this coalition of the non-Jim-and-Ted Club. It may not be too unlikely to see Lyle Oberg endorse Ted Morton in the meantime. Victor Doerksen will probably park his votes with Morton.

But the question lies, how much support does an endorsement actually create? As this is not a delegated leadership race the members voting in this selection are not stuck in a large convention hall or hotel with a world of peer pressure pushing them around. It should be interesting to see how strong the internal campaign mechanisms of each leadership candidate’s campaign are and how much of this structure will stay alive or transfer over to the endorsee.

In the time between now and the Tories second ballot next week, expect to see each of the last three old-white men standing to be promise-making and selling their $5 memberships at every street corner.

Also, while I was at the Edmonton Forum I asked a member of the PC Party Executive Committee what would happen if no candidate got more than 50% + 1 on the second ballot. She didn’t have an answer. This seems like something that should be planned for…

As much as a political geek I am, I find it very concerning at how much main stream media attention the results of this internal party leadership selection are getting – the same, if not more, than an actual legitimate and franchised General Election. Many media folks and blogger-types seem to be getting these two very very different things confused.

The Alberta PC Party leadership selection is not an exercise in democracy. So don’t pretend like it is.

Care ‘o The One Party State…

First Ballot Results Thanks to the Invisible Hand, who is liveblogging the results from Calgary, here are the final totals:

Dinning 29,470
Morton 25,614
Stelmach 14,967
Oberg 11,638
Hancock 7595
Norris 6789
Doerksen 873
McPherson 744
Total: 97,690

Looks like I may have been a little off on my predictions. I’ll be interesting to see the final verified totals tomorrow morning. I’ll promise more analysis then.

Snarky comments, thoughtful observations, and rude remarks welcomed.

UPDATE: Larry Johnsrude has reported that Dave Hancock has endorsed Ed Stelmach in order to form a “Northern Alliance” (not to be confused with the other Northern Alliance). If this is true then I’m not totally shocked by Hancock’s decision to support Ed Stelmach over Jim Dinning as Dinning’s campaign has not exactly been the most gracious gang of frontrunners around the block.

How is this surprising?

Jim Dinning, Ted Morton jump into lead in first-ballot voting for
next Alberta premier

Dean Bennett, Canadian
PressPublished: Saturday, November 25, 2006

CALGARY (CP) – The race to replace Premier Ralph Klein as leader of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party was shaping up as two-man battle in early vote returns Saturday.

Former Alberta treasurer Jim Dinning and backbencher Ted Morton were within about 800 votes of each other but racing away from Ed Stelmach and Lyle Oberg, who were battling for a distant third by the time 20 per cent of the votes had been counted.

None of the candidates was close to the 50 per cent plus one majority needed for a first-ballot win. If no one receives the 50 per cent, the top three finishers will move on to a second ballot next Saturday that would see voters rank the candidates in order of preference.

Looking forward to seeing the results tomorrow morning…

I had hoped to get this post out yesterday, but in honour of my sitting in a warm room sipping hot coffee and reading the New York Times online as Tories across the province are out in the cold shuttling their members to the Alberta PC leadership polls, here are my thoughts on the race for the leader of the Alberta PC Party on selection day…

1) The weather outside is frightful. The weather should play a huge role in the turnout. It is cold in Edmonton with a wind-chill and similar weather across Alberta.

2) The weather factor should affect the committed v. Tory-come-lately member voter turnouts across Alberta. As I mentioned before, I believe this will play a substantial role between the candidates and their type of supporters. As I’ve stated before, I believe Ted Morton‘s supporters are more committed to show up to the polls than Jim Dinning supporters. That said, Jim Dinning’s supporters may simply just overwhelm those of the other candidates due to sheer numbers.

3) Organization or lack thereof. There were some huge problems with the advanced polls this week leaving candidates like Dave Hancock waiting in line for hours. Gary McPherson blamed Alberta PC Party organizers. Others blamed it on candidate Lyle Oberg‘s busing in hundreds of folks from Edmonton’s ethnic communities. There has already been complaints about lack of organization and unethical acts by various leadership camps during today’s selection vote.

4) Turnout. Because there are no rules regarding when anyone can by a Alberta PC membership and vote (well, you can just show up and pay $5 to vote at the polling station), it is hard to say how many members will actually show up and vote. Though at the beginning of this race Jim Dinning, Ted Morton, and Mark Norris all declared that they would sell around 100,000 memberships, I’d be surprised if there were more than 80,000 people who showed up to vote on the first ballot.

5) Rural v. Urban. This may play a huge role in who gets their support out. I think it’s safe to say that Lyle Oberg, Ed Stelmach, and Ted Morton are drawing a large amount of their support from rural Alberta. Turnout from these supporters will largely depend on road and snow conditions out in the country. Urban voters may have an easier time with shorter distances to travel and municipally plowed roads.

Rural Albertans played a huge role in Ralph Klein’s 1992 PC leadership victory over Nancy Betkowski, so it should be interesting to see if after Klein’s negative infrastructure cuts to rural communities if rural Albertans are inspired to participate in this internal party leadership selection. Interestingly, Jim Dinning was the Chair of Nancy Betkowski’s 1992 PC leadership campaign.

6) What are Alberta PC members looking for in their new leader? If they are looking for the status quo, they will go with the Jim Dinning gang and his 36 MLA caucus support. If they are looking for someone to shake up the way the Tory Government operates, they should probably vote for someone like Ted Morton. If they are looking for someone to lead a completely dysfunctional Tory Government, they should probably vote for someone like Lyle Oberg…

7) To watch… if no candidate takes it on the first ballot it should be interesting to see who drops out and endorses who… only three candidates may make it to the second ballot set for next weekend. Membership sales are allowed to continue between the two ballots.

How bitter will the candidates and their camps be after the first ballot? The ideological so-con v. red tory and establishment v. non-establishment divide in this race has been evident from the beginning and threatens to tear the Tories apart from the inside. Will the Calgary corporate mafia shut out the reform grassroots base? It should be entertaining to watch.

8) My predictions… In placing my predictions, I must say that as mentioned above, it is extremely difficult to predict due to the lack of rules surrounding membership sales, so here is my best shot for predicting the first ballot in the Alberta PC leadership selection…

Jim Dinning – 39%
Ted Morton – 19%
Lyle Oberg – 14%
Mark Norris – 11%
Ed Stelmach – 10%
Dave Hancock – 6%
Gary McPherson – 1%
Victor Doerksen – 1%

This said, a Jim Dinning win on the first-ballot would not surprise me a bit.

Graham Thomson hit it right on the mark.

Leadership candidate Gary McPherson has said those organizing the race couldn’t run a two-car funeral procession. It’s more than a little disconcerting to think they’re in charge of the process to choose our next premier.

Understandably, there were plenty of upset Tories waiting in line on Monday. But none were angrier than those back at the headquarters of the various leadership campaigns who smelled a rat.

They blamed the Lyle Oberg campaign for using the advance poll as a sneaky way of busing in hundreds of supporters to the convenient downtown location rather than having them make their own way to the regular polls scattered throughout the city on Saturday. Those who voted in the advance poll had to sign a statement declaring they couldn’t make it to the Saturday poll.

The other campaigns muttered darkly about Oberg abusing the rules.

Rules? What rules? When it comes to rules, the Tory leadership race is the Wild West without the sheriff. There are almost no rules and even less policing.

What Oberg did was simply get out his vote — and that’s what this race is all about: selling memberships and getting those members out to cast a ballot. Oberg, dismissed on more than one occasion by critics and pundits, is once again proving himself more resilient than Methuselah.

There are other complaints popping up about dastardly deeds in the desperate last days of the race. Various leadership camps are muttering about how other campaigns are buying up $5 membership cards and giving them away free to people, whether those people asked for them or not.

However, there’s no rule against buying memberships and giving them away.

If Tories are upset by too few rules or no enforcement of those rules they have no-one to blame but their own party. This is a Tory-run, internally-organized party affair.

This is not a general election. This is not an exercise in democracy, even though it mimics the process.

Aliens from Mars or from Tory party headquarters might argue it’s democracy. After all, it is a one-person, one-vote system where the ballots are cast in polling stations and then counted to determine the winning candidate. This race also has all-candidate forums and campaign buttons and plenty of media coverage.

But this is not democracy in action.

If it is democracy, it’s the type practiced in the old Soviet Union where people were allowed to vote but all the candidates came from the Communist Party.

In this Tory leadership-race version of democracy, the only candidates are Conservatives. …

Let the Tories have their vote.

Then let Albertans as a whole pass judgement on the Tories’ choice — in the next general election, when we exercise our democratic right.

A bunch o’ stuff…

– Jim Dimming has set up a new campaign website… wait a minute… (props to DH for the linkage)

– Following Ted Morton’s new hit single, Jim Dimm…nning has released a new single. Which I have to say will give Kevin Federline a run for his money… it’s really that awful… and 5 minutes long… shouldn’t these guys be busy selling memberships? Here’s c-lo thoughts…

This is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, the maraca is useless, the song lacks even folksy charm, let alone any passion and the lyrics are terrible… Please tell me this is not on his website. This is reason alone to not vote for him.

90 seconds in I’m thinking “when will this end”. I am now approaching the 4:00 minute mark…. who wrote this torture!!!!!

And they wonder why homicides are going up!!!!!

If this goes over five minutes… I swear to god….

Praise the heavens!!!! It ended… just before the 5:00 minute mark coincidentally….

– I attended a Women in Politics seminar at the U of A tonight. Speakers included MLA’s Laurie Blakeman and Weslyn Mather and former MP Anne McLellan.

– Senator Hillary Clinton’s Election Campaign spent $31 Million – including $13,000 in flowers and $27,000 in valet parking…

– and finally, I’ll have my uber-Alberta PC leadership race predictions up on Friday… what will they be? Tune in on Friday…

Though this is a bit of fun gimick on the part of Ted Morton Alberta PC leadership campaign, I think a little part of me died when I first heard it…

On another note, I thought this was quite interesting…

In 2000, tens of thousands of Hanoi’s residents poured into the streets to witness the visit of the first American head of state since the end of the Vietnam War. Mr. Clinton toured the thousand-year-old Temple of Literature, grabbed lunch at a noodle shop, argued with Communist Party leaders about American imperialism and sifted the earth for the remains of a missing airman.

On Saturday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, conceded that the president had not come into direct contact with ordinary Vietnamese, but said that they connected anyway.

“If you’d been part of the president’s motorcade as we’ve shuttled back and forth,” he said, reporters would have seen that “the president has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.”

He continued: “I think he’s gotten a real sense of the warmth of the Vietnamese people and their willingness to put a very difficult period for both the United States and Vietnam behind them.”

Yep. Nothing like the warmth of an armoured Presidential motorcade…

Edmonton Manning MLA Dan Backs is no longer a member of the Official Opposition Alberta Liberal Caucus.

I’ve heard various shifty rumours about his involvement in the Tory leadership race in the past couple months and Backs has always been an odd fellow, so I’m not sure I’m totally surprised by this action.

In making the announcement, Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft said, “This has been a difficult decision. Dan has made valuable contributions.”

“However, teamwork is key to being an effective Opposition, and I believe that this decision will allow our Caucus team to function better.”

I’ll see what I can do about offering more comment later today…

UPDATE: Does anyone find it interesting that this post generated a lot more discussion and comments than my previous post about Peter Lougheed endorsing Jim Dinning?

Peter Lougheed’s endorsement of Tory Dauphin Jim Dinning means something. Right?

Questions:
– Will Peter Lougheed’s endorsement effect the PC leadership race in any big way?
– Does this put Dinning over the top on the first ballot?
– What does this do to Red Tory candidate Dave Hancock?
– What happens if Dinning takes it on the first ballot?
– Will this increase the low interest in the leadership selection?

More comments on this in the near future – along with my predictions on the Alberta PC leadership selection, the after-effects, a new challenge for the Alberta Liberals, NDP, and Alliance, and what happens next in Alberta’s political scene…

I spent most of Saturday at the Parkland Institute‘s Power for the People conference at the University of Alberta. The speakers were fairly interesting and covered topics surrounding Alberta politics, energy, the tar sands, etc. I have some notes and will post them up soon.

Interesting speakers I’ve seen so far:
John Ralston Saul, Jim Cardinal, Mark Lisac, Gillian Steward, Lindsay Telfer, and Dr. Gordon Laxer.

Yep. That’s correct. I’m a fairly modest fellow, but I have to say that daveberta is my favorite blog to read on a daily basis.

So, it appears that someone has nominated daveberta in the 2006 Canadian Blogging Awards for Best Blog and Best Progressive Blog (a slightly broad term). During last year’s 2005 Canadian Blogging Awards, this blog was awarded 2nd place in the BEST PERSONAL BLOG category (which seems non existant this time around).

So, if you should so feel inclined, I would encourage you and your loved ones to hop on over and VOTE FOR DAVEBERTA under the BEST BLOG and BEST PROGRESSIVE BLOG categories.

I thought this was probably a more appropriate title for my previous post…

From Tuesday’s intro to The Current on CBC Radio One…

It’s Tuesday November 14th.

The federal government has committed $80 million dollars to safeguarding urban transit systems against terrorist attack. The money will be spent primarily on new surveillance cameras and communications equipment.

Currently, expect the cameras to pick up the following images: under-funded downtowns, pot-holed streets, ailing infrastructure.

(voice horrified, amazed) My God, the terrorists have already STRUCK…

This is the Current.

Let’s all remember this when the election rolls around!