First ballot results of today’s Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership vote:
Gary Mar: 24195
Alison Redford: 11129
Doug Horner: 8635
Ted Morton: 6962
Rick Orman: 6005
Doug Griffiths: 2435
As no candidate received more than 50% of the vote, the top three candidates will contest a second ballot on October 1. More detailed poll by poll analysis coming soon.
Today is election day in Alberta, but not the kind of election day that would dominate the airwaves and twitter streams in most other provinces in a modern liberal democratic state like Canada. Today, Alberta’s forty-year governing Progressive Conservatives are casting their vote in the first ballot for their new leader, which has become in the minds of many long-time Conservative stalwarts and hoards of two-minute Tories, an event as important as a general election.
Does this sound scary? It is probably a confusing political environment for most Canadians, and while most Albertans will not participate in this internal party leadership contest, it will have a large effect on the direction that Alberta’s governing party will take in the months before (and most likely after) the next general election. Despite the lack of defining issues or real narrative during this campaign (aside from candidates reassuring party members that they are not Premier Ed Stelmach), it has been a fairly dull affair.
If you do decide to track down the location of your local PC Party voting station and pay the $5 to purchase a membership, who do you vote for? Over the past few months, and increasingly over the past few days, I have heard more plans for strategic voting than I had ever hoped to.
Vote for Gary Mar to stop Ted Morton from winning.
Vote for Alison Redford to stop Ted Morton from winning.
Vote Gary Mar to stop Frederick Lee from winning.
Vote for Ted Morton to stop Gary Mar from winning.
Vote for Alison Redford to stop Gary Mar from winning.
Vote for Doug Horner to stop Gary Mar from winning.
Vote for Doug Griffiths to stop Gary Mar from winning.
Vote for Rick Orman to stop Gary Mar from winning.
Vote for a Calgarian to stop Doug Horner from winning.
Vote for Doug Horner to stop a Calgarian from winning.
Vote for Rick Orman to split the right-wing Ted Morton vote.
What ever combination of results is achieved today, it could be an interesting next two weeks. If no candidate receives more than 50% tonight, then a second vote will be held on October 1. The results of the first ballot vote are expected to be announced at an event in Calgary at 7:30pm tonight. You will find the results posted on this blog around that time.
I will also have the pleasure of joining the Calgary Herald political commentary crew starting around 7:00pm on their Cover it Live feed. Feel free to stop by there and join the conversation.
Over the past four days, readers of this blog have voted for their top three Progressive Conservative leadership candidates of their choice.
The results show Gary Mar placing first and Alison Redford in second with Doug Horner and Ted Morton competing for third place.
A recent poll of PC Party members also placed Mr. Mar and Ms. Redford as first and second in the contest. The source of the lists used to conduct the poll are now under question.
Progressive Conservative members will be voting on the first ballot of their leadership selection process on September 17. If no candidate receives more than 50%, the top three candidates contest a second ballot on October 1.
The Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald have published the results of a joint-Environics poll gauging support for Progressive Conservative leadership candidates among 800 card-carrying party members:
Province-wide
Gary Mar: 31%
Alison Redford: 20%
Doug Horner: 12%
Ted Morton: 10%
Rick Orman: 5%
Doug Griffiths: 4%
Undecided/Won’t vote: 17%
Edmonton
Gary Mar: 43%
Doug Horner: 14%
Alison Redford: 10%
Ted Morotn: 7%
Calgary
Alison Redford: 36%
Gary Mar: 22%
Ted Morton 11%
Doug Horner: 1%
It is not a big surprise to see Mr. Mar in the lead, but Ms. Redford’s support is likely to surprise a few political watchers who thought that she would be fighting for third place in this contest.
Advanced voting for the first-ballot of the leadership selection process begins today. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote on the first-ballot on September 17, the top three candidates will compete in a second-ballot vote on October 1.
After a week of dodging questions from intrepid CBC reporter Charles Rusnell about a covert email alias and shredded ministerial documents, former Finance Minister Ted Morton‘s campaign for Alberta’s Progressive Conservative leadership has taken its first big hit with just more than a week before the first ballot vote.
After making ‘government transparency’ a key theme of his campaign, squeaky clean conservative Dr. Morton’s commitment to the pledge is being questioned when it was revealed that he used a covert email address under his little known full first- and middle-names “Frederick Lee” to conduct government business. It is being suggested that Dr. Morton’s covert email alias could have foiled Freedom of Information requests.
CBC discovered that correspondence and documents, including those connected to the covert email alias, were shredded or destroyed when Dr. Morton left his ministry to seek the PC leadership earlier this year.
A spokesperson for Alberta’s Information and Privacy Commissioner told the media that the Office would be launching an immediate investigation into the shredding allegations.
Dr. Morton downplayed the criticisms yesterday, but that did not stop his right-wing competitors Rick Orman and Wildrose leader Danielle Smith from tackling him in the media. Ms. Smith claimed that because the documents belonged to the people of Alberta, Dr. Morton’s staff had no right to feed them to the paper shredder on a whim.
Will these revelations hurt Dr. Morton’s chances in next week’s leadership vote? It is difficult to say. Dr. Morton has run a stealth campaign during this contest, which has focused on low-profile events and selling memberships. This is very different from his run in 2006, which publicly stressed his social conservative values on issues like same-sex marriage.
Watch for the other PC candidates to train their guns on Dr. Morton’s last minute weakness in the final week.
Former Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams traveled to Fort McMurray this week to support Alberta PC leadership candidate Gary Mar and to give the candidate a boost in support from Newfoundland’s diaspora in the northern Alberta community.
The retired Newfoundland Premier’s support may be one of the former Calgary MLAs most significant endorsement in northern Alberta, where most MLAs are backing former Deputy Premier Doug Horner.
The endorsement could play well among regular conservative voters, who could respect Mr. Williams as a crusader for provincial-rights, but his battles with Ottawa also pitted him against Calgary-based Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Mr. Williams led the charge against Prime Minister Harper’s Conservatives in the 2008 federal election, which ended with the Conservatives being shut out of that province. They failed to elect any Members of Parliament on the island again in the 2011 federal election [edit: Peter Penashue was elected as the Conservative MP for Labrador, on the mainland portion of that province].
Seen by many as Mr. Mar’s main competition, former Finance Minister Ted Morton has a photo of Prime Minister Harper and himself prominently placed on the front-page of his website. Earlier in the race, online conservative pundits piled on Mr. Mar’s campaign for gaining the support of Federal Liberal fundraiser Daryl Fridhandler.
This is not the first time that Alberta’s political parties have tried to use a Newfoundland connection to get votes in Fort McMurray. In 2007, former Premier Brian Tobin was expected to join then-Liberal leader Kevin Taft at a fundraiser in Fort McMurray. Mr. Tobin had to cancel at the last minute.
I have updated the list of declared and nominated candidates standing in the next provincial election.
Airdrie: The Airdrie City View is reporting that former Airdrie Mayor Linda Bruce is volunteering for Gary Mar‘s PC leadership campaign, adding to the speculation that she may seek the PC nomination to challenge Wildrose MLA Rob Anderson.
Banff-Cochrane: Transport worker Jamie Kleinsteuber has been nominated as the Alberta NDP candidate in this mountain constituency. Incumbent PC MLA Janis Tarchuk is being tight lipped about whether she will seek re-election. Ms. Tarchuk was first elected in 1997 and served in cabinet until she was dropped from cabinet in 2010.
Calgary-Currie: Alberta Party MLA Dave Taylor has announced that he will be retiring at the next election. This is not a complete surprise, but it is not good news for the new party, who will lose their only incumbent MLA at the next election. Mr. Taylor was first elected as a Liberal in 2004 and left that party to sit as an Independent in 2010. He joined the Alberta Party in 2011.
Calgary-Mackay-Nose Hill – Collin Anderson has been nominated as the NDP candidate in this north Calgary constituency. Ms. Anderson ran in the recent federal election as the NDP candidate in Calgary-Nose Hill and in the 2008 provincial election in Calgary-North West. has served in positions with Telecommunications Workers Union and the Calgary & District Labour Council.
Calgary-McCall: Depending on who you believe, the Wildrose either disqualified them for breaking the nomination rules or they quit, but candidates Deepshikha Brar, Khalil Karbani, and Braham Luddu are no longer eligible to run for that party. Candidate Grant Galpin appears to be the only candidate left standing.
Drumheller-Stettler: Hanna Town Councillor Chris Warwick has withdrawn his nomination for the Wildrose candidacy in this constituency. Candidates Dave France, Rick Strankman, and Patrick Turnbull remain declared in the nomination contest,.
Edmonton-Castle Downs: Former pharmaceutical employee John Oplanich is the nominated Wildrose candidate in this north Edmonton constituency. Mr. Oplanich ran for Edmonton City Council in 2010, placing third in Ward 3.
Edmonton-McClung: Varscona Theatre executive director John Hudson has been nominated as the Alberta Party candidate in this west Edmonton constituency.
Edmonton-Strathcona: NDP MLA Rachel Notley is expected to be acclaimed at a nomination meeting planned for October 11. Vancouver-Kingsway NDP Member of Parliament Don Davies is the guest speaker.
Lethbridge-West: Candidates Shannon Phillips and James Moore will face-off in a contested NDP nomination meeting on September 11.
Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills: The race to replace retiring Progressive Conservative MLA Richard Marz is on. Mountain View County councillor and former reeve Al Kemmere has announced his candidacy to seek the PC nomination. Mr. Kemmere is also a director for the Association of Alberta Rural Municipalities and Districts.
Also seeking the nomination is William Stevenson, who has been endorsed by PC leadership candidate Ted Morton and Wild Rose Member of Parliament Blake Richards.
St. Albert: Former St. Albert alderman James Burrows is the nominated Wildrose candidate. Liberal Party activist Alex Bosse is seeking his party’s nomination.
Sturgeon-St. Albert: Linda Robinson, co-chair of the Indigenous Peoples caucus of the NDP, is seeking her party’s nomination in this constituency. Ms. Robinson works for the Alberta Federation of Labour.
Via The Edmontonian, Marty Chan‘s Mothership Down, a must watch for Alberta politicos:
Via Postmedia News, Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership candidates are calling for another round of Senator-in-Waiting elections to happen concurrent with the next provincial election:
“We want them (Senate nominees) to be current. We don’t want to end up with a stale list,” said Alison Redford, Calgary-Elbow member of provincial legislature and the lone female candidate in the Tory race. “There must be another election and we may as well hold it in conjunction with the next provincial election.”
Redford believes Albertans should elect three Senate nominees who could fill the three vacancies over the next few years. Liberal Sen. Tommy Banks faces retirement in December 2011; Conservative Sen. Bert Brown must retire by March 2013; and Liberal Sen. Joyce Fairbairn by November 2014.
Alberta has held three Senate elections, in 1989, 1998, and 2004. One of Ms. Redford’s opponents, former Finance Minister Ted Morton was elected as a Senator-in-Waiting in 1998 and gave up the position-in-waiting when he ran in the 2004 provincial election in the Foothills-Rockyview constituency. PC candidates elected in the 2004 contest include Senator-no-longer-in-waiting Bert Brown, and Senators-still-waiting Betty Unger, Cliff Breitkreuz, and Senator-got-tired-of-waiting Link Byfield (who is now the Wildrose candidate in Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock).
The Wildrose announced yesterday that its former Executive Director, Vitor Marciano, would be one of its candidates in the next Senate election. Mr. Marciano is a well-known Conservative Party of Canada operative in Alberta. It is unknown whether the other opposition parties would support candidates in a Senate election.
The last Liberal to stand in a Senate election was Calgary lawyer Bill Code, who placed second in the 1989 contest. The New Democrats support the abolition of the Senate, but in 1998, future NDP candidate in Edmonton-Glenora Guy Desrosiers stood as an Independent Senate candidate (and placed third with 16.7% of the vote).
Earlier this week I had the privilege of sharing some of my thoughts about the Progressive Conservative leadership contest with delegates at the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) summer conference in Banff.
On Wednesday morning, all six candidates for the PC leadership (Doug Griffiths, Doug Horner, Gary Mar, Ted Morton, Rick Orman, and Alison Redford) attended a forum organized by the ATA which gave delegates at the conference an opportunity to submit questions to the candidates on a wide variety of education issues. It said a lot about the strength and importance of the teaching profession in Alberta that all six of the candidates traveled to Banff for the day to participate in this forum.
The six candidates answered a variety of questions focusing on transformation, funding, and the future of education in Alberta. Some candidates did better than others.
Mr. Griffiths was clearly the crowd favourite. A teacher himself, he was able to speak from experience and connected well with the audience of politically active educators. This was Mr. Griffiths coming out party in the leadership contest.
Ms. Redford and Mr. Horner did well, though the general focus around “outcomes” and other buzz words used by all the candidates left an uncomfortable amount of ambiguity in the discussion. The more conservative Professor Morton and Mr. Orman were clearly sailing in unfriendly waters.
In typical front-runner fashion, Mr. Mar said a lot without saying much. He also did not let the facts stand in the way of telling a folksy story. During the forum, Mr. Mar told the audience a story about his time as Education Minister in 1999 when his office wrote a memo to the Minister of Health. Only weeks later, he said, he was shuffled into the Health portfolio and then had to respond to his own memo (cue the laugh track). It was a folksy story, only Mr. Mar forgot to mention that he was actually shuffled from Education to become the Environment Minister in 1999. He was appointed as Health Minister over a year after he was appointed Environment Minister.
Being in the auditorium at the time, there was a few points during the forum when it felt like the candidates were on the verge of having a real discussion about the future of education. Unfortunately, most of the candidates fell back into safe and inoffensive “education is good” language.
Following the leadership candidates forum, I participated in a panel discussion with the ATA’s Dennis Theobald and Mount Royal University Professor Keith Brownsey where we engaged in a good discussion about the leadership candidates and what the political winds of change mean for the education system in Alberta. Although I had hoped that we could have had a broader conversation about the future of Alberta politics, time only allowed us to have a good discussion about what the leadership candidates had said that morning and what they might do as Premier.
Thank you to the ATA and to the teachers who participated in the discussion for a great day.
Maybe it’s my down-home redneck roots, Or these dusty ‘ol Alberta boots, But like a Chinook wind keeps coming back again
I will be away from this blog for the next few days enjoying a summer sojourn in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.
Later this week I will be attending the Alberta Teachers’ Association Summer conference in the beautiful mountain town of Banff, where I will have the privilege of sharing some of my thoughts on the state of Alberta politics and the ongoing Progressive Conservative leadership contest. I am told that all the PC leadership candidates, Doug Griffiths, Doug Horner, Gary Mar, Ted Morton, Rick Orman, and Alison Redford will also be in Banff this week to participate in a forum for the teachers at the conference.
1. Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Alison Redford announced that she would raise monthly payments from the Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) program from $400 to $1,588 and doubling the allowable income earned for participants. Wildrose communications director Brock Harrison criticized the announcement on Twitter, claiming it would be too costly. The Liberals and NDP have called for increases to AISH funding for years.
During the 2004 provincial election, then-Premier Ralph Klein was criticized for claiming that there was rampant abuse in the program. He then told the media that “severely normal” people do not want to talk about AISH.
2. Gary Mar attempted to grab headlines about Edmonton’s recent streak of murders by criticizing the Safe Communities Initiative, initiated by Premier Ed Stelmach and former Justice Minister Redford. Ms. Redford rebutted Mr. Mar’s criticism of the Safe Communities Initiative by listing statistics showing Youth Crime in Calgary down by 25% and that crime in Canada is at its lowest since 1973.
For more facts debunking Edmonton’s claim to fame as “Canada’s Murder Capital”, see everybodyinthiscityisarmed.com
3. While Ms. Redford and Mr. Mar are two candidates most likely to be branded as Calgarians, southerner Ted Morton is has picked up support from six MLAs in the Edmonton area, including some who have deep connections to their cultural communities (which can produce significant amounts of sold memberships).
4. Former President of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers David Manning has been appointed as Alberta’s Representative in Washington DC, replacing Mr. Mar, who left the position to seek the PC leadership. Mr. Manning’s appointment comes as the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas continues to cause controversy south of the border.
5. Outgoing Liberal leader David Swann raised concerns about Mr. Mar’s Public-Private Partnership (P3) friendly health care policy and one of Mr. Mar’s leadership campaign’s largest donors Dr. Kabir Jivraj. Dr. Jivraj is the former Chief Medical Officer of the Calgary Health Region and is the founder of AgeCare, a for-profit corporation that provides long-term care for senior citizens.
Two more endorsements have been added to the map of MLA support in the 2011 Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership contest.
Three-term Calgary-Shaw MLA and Tourism Minister Cindy Ady has endorsed leadership candidate Gary Mar. Minister Ady is Mr. Mar’s third Calgary MLA endorsements, following support from Calgary-Foothills MLA Len Webber, Calgary-Nose Hill MLA Neil Brown, and Calgary-West MLA Ron Liepert.
Word on the street is that first-term St. Albert MLA Ken Allred has thrown his support behind former Finance Minister Ted Morton. This is Dr. Morton’s tenth MLA endorsement and sixth endorsement from an MLA in the Edmonton region.
Who would have thought that the choice of Edmonton’s PC MLAs would be Dr. Morton?
The game of funding billionaire Daryl Katz‘s contentious downtown Edmonton arena proposal entered the provincial political arena this week with candidates in the Progressive Conservative leadership contest and an opposition politician dancing around this delicate issue. Supporters of the Katz downtown arena, including Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel, are stalking the provincial leadership candidates for commitments to hand over provincial tax dollars to fill an extra $100 million gap to construct the project on top of the $125 million from taxes on surrounding development and other municipal funds.
In front of a crowd of more than 350 supporters in Vermilion last week, the PC leadership candidates balked at the idea of using provincial funding to support the construction of the privately-operated downtown arena.
A day later, conservative crusader Ted Morton astonishingly floated the bizarre idea that the capital region hold a referendum to add one per cent to Goods and Services Tax (a “penny tax”) for two years in order to pay for the Katz downtown arena. This proposal is problematic at its most basic (including the fact that the GST is a federal tax).
After being incorrectly reported as supporting a tax increase to fund the arena, Alison Redford issued a statement setting the record straight that she opposes any provincial direct funding or a dedicated tax. Former Deputy Premier Doug Horner ruled out direct funding from the provincial government.
In Vermilion, Gary Mar reaffirmed his previous position that the Katz downtown arena will not receive any provincial funding if he becomes Premier.
Never too far away to deliver a soundbite, Wildrose leader Danielle Smith issued a hastily written media release during a stop in Peace River calling for a lottery to fill the $100 million gap.
Premier Ed Stelmach suggested that Mayor Mandel look to existing funds in the already allocated funds from the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) to fill the gap. Using MSI funds to find $100 million for the Katz downtown arena could mean diverting already promised towards the construction and maintenance of public infrastructure such as roads, public transit, and community halls.
While the City of Edmonton will technically “own” the new downtown arena, Mr. Katz, the billionaire owner of the Edmonton Oilers, will collect the revenue generated at the arena.
Meanwhile, Mr. Katz remains conspicuously missing from this public funding debate (perhaps he is hanging out with his millionaire friend Gary Bettman).
Related posts
boosterism beating diligence and reason in katz downtown arena debate.
understanding the katz arena district debate: community revitalization levy, opportunity costs, and the arena poll.
election promises, arena subsidies, and political zealots.
for better or worse, the katz group is getting their arena deal.
