The Liberal crowd at its height today, as Raj Sherman gave his victory speech. Below: Dr. Sherman gestures hopefully a few moments before his first-ballot victory was announced; Herald columnist Don Braid.Who has the most to fear from the election of Raj Sherman today as the leader of the Alberta Liberal Party: The Conservatives or … the Liberals?
Naturally, there are two schools of thought about this.
One is that the former Progressive Conservative Parliamentary Secretary for Health, who was fired from his post and kicked out of the Tory caucus last November by Premier Ed Stelmach, is a remarkable politician who has the power to shake up Alberta politics and challenge the government from the centre.
Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid espoused this view this afternoon soon after Dr. Sherman’s widely expected first-ballot victory: “Today the governing PCs face double trouble. There’s a charismatic leader on the right in Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith. Now, firebrand Raj Sherman leads the Liberals from the other flank.”
The other is that the MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark is divisive and impulsive a one-issue politician who will be the final stake driven through the heart of the moribund Alberta Liberal Party. As veteran NDP campaigner Lou Arab observed in a Tweet moments after the results were announced to a mostly empty gymnasium at the University of Alberta: “Raj Sherman is built for speed, not distance. This will end badly for the Liberals.”
Who got it right? Well, it’s impossible to say for sure just yet, of course, but it seems likely that while the governing Conservatives may still have a few reasons to fear Ms. Smith and her Wildrose Party, they need not lose much sleep over the ascension of Dr. Sherman.
As has been said in this space before, Dr. Sherman doesn’t really care about the party or any policy other than his prescriptions for health care. He’s a Red Tory whose leadership campaign was deeply divisive in Liberal circles. That divisiveness was not washed away by the percentage of his victory this afternoon as the body language of his fellow candidates clearly showed.
Moreover, notwithstanding the way Dr. Sherman was treated last fall when he fell out with his former Tory caucus mates, there are legitimate questions about the quality of his judgment, as illustrated by his infamous Nov. 17 email to the premier.
Long-time Liberals at this afternoon’s sparsely attended gathering, the kind of people have kept the Liberals afloat in Alberta’s Capital Region through generations of high Tory tides, did not look or sound particularly enthused by Dr. Sherman’s elevation. Many had the grim look of loyalists convinced they had been the victims of the invasion of the party snatchers!
And while Dr. Sherman’s victory was decisive enough in percentage terms, it was not particularly impressive in raw numbers: Despite close to 30,000 people signing up as supporters under the party’s bizarre new rules that let anyone vote if they expressed an interest, fewer than 8,600 people actually bothered to cast a ballot.
All candidates complained that their supporters couldn’t get personal identification numbers to vote online, but, really, this total still doesn’t indicate a party that is setting Albertans’ hair on fire! A case can be made that what Dr. Sherman has captured is not much of a prize at all.
David Swann, the party’s outgoing leader and the Legislature’s only other physician, may have got it more than half right when he told the three-quarters empty gym that “we’ll never form government – indeed, we don’t deserve to form government – until we take a lo
ng hard look at our own performance.”Alas, that prescription was one that Dr. Swann never really took himself, as he showed when he went on to say, “that includes everyone in this room, every volunteer, every MLA, every candidate, every party staff member, every caucus staff member that this party ever had. All of us share responsibility for where we are today…”
Sorry, Dr. Swann, but blaming everyone is pretty rich coming from a leader who in four years never captured anyone’s imagination, who announced he was quitting months ago but didn’t step down until weeks before an election was likely, who saw no urgency to recruit candidates to run for the party, and who allowed his party executive to concoct a screwball voting procedure that all but handed the reins of the party to a flighty outsider.
The Alberta Liberals are still almost completely unprepared for the election that is sure to come very soon. After today, it’s hard to imagine the choice of Dr. Sherman resulting in a happy ending for the Liberals.
This post also appears on Rabble.ca.
7 comments:
The Liberal Party in Alberta will be gone soon. Bad choice, Alberta needs way more than just resolve emergency room problems.
Sorry Dave you are trying to mislead the public for your own gain. From his speech and many releases, he is a far more than a multi-issue politician and fully aware of all issues to Alberta and prepared to engage them all. The only imploded party is the one you work with, the NDP. So far, Sherman has six has in made an utter fxxl out of you and your baseless insults and one-sided propaganda as well as many other so-called media hacks and political scientist hacks that drink Tory koolaid. None of your articles offer any constructive ideas, just negative ranting, hoping to claw liberal votes and promote torie causes. Grow up Dave. What Sherman did was courageous, he his capable, intelligent and is starting to wield significant influence. Just remember he started politics only 3 yes ago!
Wow Dave so negative. If you had stayed a little longer you would have seen more people in the room albeit, they still would have not filled the bleachers breaking the media management cardinal rule about using a room that is bigger than those you expect to show up.
I thought Graham Thompson said it best when he wrote that the Leadership announcement was a “social media convention where members voted from home and reporters Tweeted the results” Which might make old style metrics of assessing party health such as the number of people at a convention largely irrelevant.
The picture of the leadership announcement hall was interesting to me, because in my mind the room of P.C. party ideas is even more sparsely populated. Doug Horner said it best at the CBC progressive leadership debate “It’s not our role to have all the great ideas, because we don’t you’ve seen that.”
Many in the Alberta Liberal party have been hedging their support based on who won the leadership yesterday, It will be interesting to see where they land in terms of igniting their spirit which might be influenced by Sherman’s ability to attract attention and create the feeling of momentum that Alberta Liberal party members crave in their leader.
Talking to Sherman personally he is well aware of what his weaknesses are at, and is not so egotistical as to ignore them to his own peril as some pundits suggest.
During the last election Taft ran an election based on the slogan “It’s Time” The electorate wanted to know time for what? If Sherman and the Alberta Liberal Party are going to be successful they are going to need work hard to present themselves as the government in waiting, almost in the same manner as the non-stop talk about Sherman’s qualifications when he ran as P.C. candidate in Edmonton-Meadowlark that helped him to be successfully elected.
So much about Alberta politics has been completely unpredictable over the last few years, let’s not pretend that we know how all this is going to shake out based on a few observations we make.
How amount an election between Sherman and Mar over Health Care – that should be interesting eh?
I would love to attach my name to my comments here but because I work for Government I need to register my comment as anonymous given the sensitivity of my position.
to Anonymous 10:48 "I would love to attach my name to my comments here but because I work for Government I need to register my comment as anonymous given the sensitivity of my position."
Please read http://michaelwalters.ca/ by Michael Walters, Alberta Party candidate for Edmonton Rutherford. All Albertans, even government employees, maybe especially government employees, have a right to speak their ideas and opinions without fear of the consequences.
p.s. I hope you didn't use your official email address for that comment, perhaps an alias would work? You could always delete it after, being that "everyone does it" !
@anon 10:48
I would like to see a no-holds barred bare knuckle cage match debate between Sherman and Mar.
Your blogger Dave C. gets kicks out of maligning Sherman, since he got kicked from the Tory caucus and did not join the ND's.
Get over it Dave. Sherman is a realist, it was never an option joining the ND's or Wildrose.
The progressive AND fiscal maintstream momentum and populist vote is going to build behind Sherman. Laurie Blakeman and Hugh MacDonald have proclaimed they WILL work under a Sherman Leadership and continue to work in THIS very party. This dissappoints detractors like Dave C.
If Blogger Dave is like most sensible New Democrats, Anonymous 1:39 is doing him an injustice because he would have been enormously relieved that Raj Sherman did NOT join the Kneedippers. I can tell you, in fact, that there was a lot of debate about this in NDP circles and a very large number of us did NOT want to see Sherman join because he was sure to become a loose cannon on deck, just as he was for the Tories. Even the leaders who invited him, for all the usual "political" reasons, were relieved when he went to the Libs, who are finished anyway.
@anon 3:04 sure they were relieved, then why were they courting him, including brian? and even our blogger was indirectly flattering and promoting him as the most powerful politician in Alberta...was this is all just fake window dressing and they didn't REALLY want him? what ever, it takes for you to make sense of the world buddy....
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