Smith Runs Riot While the NDP Fixates on Its Leadership Race

The worst thing about the seemingly endless Alberta NDP leadership race isn’t that it’s boring, although it is.

It’s that the NDP caucus in the legislature appears to be totally distracted by it at a time the United Conservative Party government led by Danielle Smith is running out of control, introducing anti-democratic bills almost daily and pursuing a range of dangerous and destructive anti-Canadian policies.

Naturally, the NDP’s leadership race may be part of the reason the UCP is out of control right now — the governing party’s brain trust may have concluded, “Why not get a bunch of real garbage legislation onto the agenda when the Opposition party is distracted by a contest important to its future?”

But it also means that the same unfocused messaging and scattergun approach to critiquing the government that was adopted during the NDP’s 2023 general election campaign, when it appeared Rachel Notley might stick around as leader, is still being used now that Notley is headed for the exit.

Let’s face it, a five- or six-line outraged mini press release sent to reporters but publicly posted nowhere about every single issue didn’t work during the 2023 election and will have even less impact now.

Whoever wins this leadership race really needs to make competent messaging and focused messages a priority for the NDP.

So, with all due respect to all of the candidates, their campaign teams and their supporters, I’m sure a heck of a lot of Alberta New Democrats will heave a sigh of relief when this is over, even if the candidate they think is the best doesn’t win.

The reason that the race is boring, of course, is that the minute former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi entered the contest, he sucked all the oxygen out of the campaign.

Well, maybe a little bit was left, but that went pffft when Rakhi Pancholi dropped out of the contest a few days later and endorsed Nenshi.

Back in February, which seems like eons ago now, a Pollara Strategic Insights survey suggested Nenshi had the best potential “to excite the NDP’s base.”

Since then, I haven’t seen any more polling of NDP-leaning voters, not to mention actual NDP members who plan to vote, although it’s always possible there’s a public opinion survey out there that’s not being publicized for one or another obvious reason.

But anecdotal evidence — the folks your blogger talks to, and the folks they talk to — suggests a slam dunk for Nenshi is likely because most voting NDP members, for a variety of reasons, have decided he’s the most likely to be able to beat Smith, and that beating the UCP must be the priority.

This is the coalition that Notley built after the party’s unexpected victory in 2015, and it’s the reason the NDP did as well as it did in 2023.

Diehard traditional New Democrats cannot turn back the clock to the days the NDP was a minuscule party of conscience. If they tried, their coalition would soon evanesce, and with it the NDP’s chances of victory, and possibly even of remaining the official Opposition.

Yes, as leader, Nenshi would certainly strive to turn the NDP into a big-tent progressive party, which some on the left and right would inevitably accuse of being too much like Liberals. But even if you wanted to keep that from happening, that ship sailed when Capt. Notley was at the helm.

The NDP is the only opposition now and the only way to dislodge the MAGA UCP in the foreseeable future, so NDP insiders are going to have to put on their big-person pants and deal with it if they don’t get the result they want on June 22.

If the wind is really blowing Nenshi’s way within the NDP universe of voters, it doesn’t matter very much if at heart he’s not a true New Democrat — whatever that now means in Wild Rose Country — as some of his opponents complain.

If Nenshi’s support is sufficient to win on the first ballot, as seems quite possible now, it also doesn’t really matter who won last Thursday’s debate in Lethbridge — although two campaigns, former justice minister Kathleen Ganley’s and Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan’s, declared their candidate to be the winner.

Credit where credit is due, Ganley has made some substantial and detailed policy proposals — overhauling the Alberta Energy Regulator and raising the minimum wage, for example.

And McGowan might have been the only one on stage Thursday talking about how to reach Albertans outside of the NDP bubble. The NDP grew dramatically through Notley’s decade as leader. Still, it would be foolish to suggest the party doesn’t still have many miles to go to topple the UCP.

Former health minister Sarah Hoffman also advocates substantive policies, including taking meaningful action on climate change and making a real priority of ending the housing crisis. Edmonton-Rutherford MLA Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse attracted attention more for her charisma than for her policy ideas.

Nenshi’s opponents mostly complained, in the words of Jim Storrie at the Progress Report, that the front-runner “still isn’t making policy commitments.”

After the debate, there was an apparent consensus the opponents had tried mainly to differentiate themselves from the pack while appearing competent and credible.

Given the format of any multi-candidate debate, that wouldn’t have been easy at any time. All the more so when the front-runner is a mild-mannered and genial centrist.

But Nenshi carried the highest expectations, and mostly met them or came close enough it didn’t matter.

Ganley got in the best shot of the night, managing to paint the Great Purple Hope as a fair-weather New Democrat, asking him if he would run for MLA if he weren’t the leader. In response, Nenshi waffled.

But any candidate should be expected to low-bridge a campaign like this if they are far enough ahead to ensure a comfortable first-ballot victory.

Why risk giving your opponents a target to aim at if you don’t have to?

The second NDP leadership debate is scheduled to take place at the BMO Centre in Calgary on May 11. The third and final debate is set for the Expo Centre in Edmonton on June 2.

Maybe something will happen at one of those events to make the race more exciting.