Kenney wins, turns Alberta back to blue
Fledgling United Conservative Party gains majority, sweeps Notley’s NDP out after 4 years
CALGARY— After a short four years, the orange wave that swept into Alberta was replaced Tuesday night by a sea of United Conservative Party blue. UCP Leader Jason Kenney — a former federal cabinet minister who entered provincial politics three years ago with a plan to reunite Alberta’s conservatives — will be the province’s 18th premier. The fledgling party, created by a merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose in 2017, won a majority.
Tuesday night’s election ends what turned out to be a brief NDP era in Alberta. Many saw the party’s surprise 2015 victory as an accident, a reaction to the entitlement and cronyism of the previous 44-year Progressive Conservative dynasty and the result of vote-splitting between two solid right-wing parties.
Alberta’s past few provincial elections have been marked by last-minute dramatic twists. But the UCP’s victory shows that conservative Alberta is back — and, perhaps, that it never really left.
The outcome was widely predicted by polls ever since the UCP’s creation.
The weeks and months ahead will likely be a period of tremendous change in Alberta as Kenney seeks to undo the NDP’s legacy.
“Kenney has promised a dramatic backlash …
“He wants to repeal much of what the NDP has done, repeal it very quickly, and he has his fight-back strategy,” said Duane Brat t, a political science
professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
“This will be a very active government. We’ll see whether he goes ahead and does everything that’s promised and whether it will be effective.”
Throughout the 2019 campaign, the vote was often framed as a choice between economic priorities and social values.
Notley had tried to sell Albertans on her ethics, pointing to several festering scandals that dogged the UCP on the campaign trail and promising spending on health care, child care and education if her party was re-elected.
Early on, several UCP candidates resigned over racist, Islamophobic or anti-LGBTQ comments. Kenney later continued to back one candidate, Mark Smith of Drayton Valley-Devon, who compared homosexuality to pedophilia in a 2013 sermon. Smith later apologized and said he never meant to equate the two. Kenney also refused to kick out candidates who questioned the science behind climate change.
Kenney’s own record of campaigning against LGBTQ rights during the 1980s AIDS crisis in San Francisco also came back to haunt him. In an interview with radio host Charles Adler, Kenney refused to apologize for supporting a push to deny spousal rights, which would prevent same-sex partners from seeing their dying loved ones in care facilities. At the time, Kenney was a post-secondary student; he has since said his views have evolved along with the rest of society. Anti-LGBTQ comments played a central role in the stunning downfall of the Wildrose Party in 2012. Not so this time.
In the months leading up to the vote, Kenney and the UCP were also rocked by allegations related to Kenney’s 2017 bid to become leader of the newly formed party. Internal emails, a secret recording and testimony from politicians all suggest his team orchestrated the campaign of candidate Jeff Callaway — using him as a “kamikaze” to attack Kenney’s main rival. Alberta’s election commissioner is also looking into allegations that Callaway’s campaign was funded by illegal donations.
Callaway denies any wrongdoing, and Kenney has said the ties between their campaigns were normal. Several Callaway donors, meanwhile, have been fined for contributing money that wasn’t theirs.
Callaway, his wife and four other donors made a failed effort to get an emergency court order to pause the election commissioner’s investigation. Affidavits filed to support their case showed Callaway himself has been ordered to return $26,500 in allegedly illegal donations and that more findings are likely on the way.
The RCMP also appear to be looking into allegations of voter fraud in the 2017 UCP leadership race. The UCP has said it is confident in the integrity of those results.
The allegations first arose in February after a former UCP MLA — who quit amid ballotstuffing allegations — wrote a letter to the RCMP, saying fake emails attached to party memberships were part of a fraudulent voting scheme.
Last week, a CBC story suggested that at least one person on the party’s membership list had been interviewed by the RCMP. The Star spoke to a number of people who said the emails attached to their names weren’t theirs but couldn’t independently find any who’d spoken with police.
CBC also reported Monday that a recent RCMP search of a Calgary UCP candidate’s business was related to the voter fraud allegations, citing the candidate’s lawyer.
Bratt said those issues won’t be going away, and the bitter fight during this election is likely to have a lasting impact on Alberta politics.
“We often hear every election is the nastiest ever. And I always say, ‘What’s your comparison?’ ” he said.
“But when I look at the items — candidates having to withdraw, candidates having to apologize, defacing of signs, RCMP investigations — it has been pretty brutal.”
The ongoing investigations will give the NDP, now moving into the role of official Opposition, much fodder for criticism in the legislature.
Bratt said having a sizable official Opposition in the legislature with experienced politicians, including former government ministers, is something new for Alberta.
Bratt said he doesn’t expect Notley to step down.
“Typically when premiers lose elections, that’s it. (In 2015, former premier) Jim Prentice resigned that night,” Bratt said.
“She’s still popular, and if (the NDP) have a significant foothold, it positions them well for the next go-round, so this is very different than what we’ve seen in the past.”