CALLING CALGARY ‘NDP HEARTLAND,’ A CURIOUS TACTIC
Jean sets up straw man with no straw as UCP leadership decision draws near
United Conservative Party leadership candidate Brian Jean held a news conference in Edmonton Tuesday, right outside the Strathcona riding office of Premier Rachel Notley.
That spot, he said bleakly, is known to some conservatives as “the heart of darkness.”
Shortly afterward Jean said, “We need a leader that will reject the politics of division.”
Put those thoughts into some kind of logical context and you get to be a political scientist on TV.
Later Jean moved on to Calgary, where he held a similar news conference outside Finance Minister Joe Ceci’s riding office, in the Calgary-Fort riding.
Things are brighter here, presumably.
He didn’t repeat the “heart of darkness” line.
But he dropped a genuine clanger when he started talking about Calgary as the NDP “heartland.”
“Calgary-Fort is known as one of those places that the NDP are strong and a fortress for the NDP here in Alberta,” Jean said.
“We’ve heard continuously that conservatives can’t win here, that no matter what happens, that the NDP will win here and other places around Calgary, and Edmonton and Alberta ...
“With the right candidate, with the right ideas, and with the right leadership, even the NDP heartland in Alberta, across Alberta, is in play for conservatives.”
Jean is setting up a straw man in a field with no straw.
Few people in Calgary, or most of Alberta, think of the NDP as a rooted, durable force — not even the NDP.
Words like “fortress” and “heartland” don’t occur to people. “Campground” is more like the common impression.
The stereotype in Calgary is that simply by uniting, conservatives can knock the NDP over with a feather in the next election. That’s not likely true, either. The NDP has the government and many cards to play.
Overconfidence would be dangerous for conservatives.
But, my gosh, to paint an unpopular one-term government as all-powerful, vulnerable only to the skills of Brian Jean, is a very strange tactic at the moment conservatives are preparing to choose a United Conservative Party leader.
“Conservatives have accepted this myth that for some reason some regions of the province are off the table to conservatives in a general election,” he says. “Those who say that are simply wrong.”
They are wrong, wherever they may be. I’ve never talked to a conservative, or New Democrat for that matter, who doesn’t think the NDP is extremely vulnerable in Calgary.
Ceci’s riding is just one example of conservative tradition and strength in this city.
The riding was created in 1997, carved from Calgary-East. Progressive Conservative Wayne Cao won it five straight times.
His closest call came in 2012, when he split the vote with a Wildrose candidate.
Together, the two conservatives polled 80 per cent.
Cao retired in 2015. Ceci won the riding, greatly aided by another Wildrose-PC vote split.
The math is similar in just about every Calgary riding — put the entire conservative vote behind one candidate, and the New Democrat would lose.
Edmonton alone is reasonably safe NDP territory, and even there, only Notley’s riding is genuinely secure.
In 2012, the NDP won only four seats, with 9.85 per cent of the provincial vote. Notley captured 61 per cent on her home turf.
When the NDP won the 2015 election, she got 82 per cent. Strathcona is a genuine NDP fortress, but almost the only one.
Jean wound up: “I want conservatives across the party, wherever they are, to know we can win right here and win all across Alberta.”
Well, most conservatives are aware of that already. To make this obvious point, Jean puffed up the NDP into something hardly anybody believes it is.
You will very seldom hear a Canadian politician impute fortress-like status to a rival, even when such a thing exists.
This has been a long leadership campaign.
Maybe exhaustion is setting in.