It’s just a byelection, but the raging battle for Calgary Centre is yet another sign that politics in Alberta is undergoing a radical shift.
How else to explain a Conservative candidate who has seen her support wither in the face of strong opposition candidates? Or a Liberal candidate who, according to some polls, is running neck-and-neck with the Conservative?
How else to explain a raucous rally for the Green candidate that attracted 500 people who paid $10 at the church door to get in?
I’ve lived in this federal riding for a long time and I have never seen such excitement around an election.
The riding includes downtown office towers, wealthy neighbourhoods, glitzy condos, walk-up apartment blocks and homeless shelters. Lots of young people, recent immigrants, seniors and oil industry employees live here and they are sometimes inclined to switch parties.
Several provincial constituencies within the federal Calgary Centre riding boundaries have at one time or another elected Liberals.
Several provincial constituencies within the federal riding boundaries have at one time or another elected Liberals. It is also the riding where a coalition of Progressive Conservatives, Liberals and NDP voters engineered a victory for Joe Clark during a Reform sweep of the province.
The former MP, Conservative Lee Richardson, resigned earlier this year to take a position with Premier Alison Redford’s team. He hewed to the “progressive” side of the Conservative family and won the last election handily with 57 per cent of the vote.
The new Conservative contender, TV political pundit Joan Crockatt, definitely tilts to the right side of the party. Her campaign manager is a former Wildrose party operative and she was an avid Wildrose supporter during the recent provincial election.
This has angered some long-standing Alberta PCs such as Pat and Sherrold Moore. They have been Tory stalwarts and important financial backers for decades. Sherrold was a close adviser to Premier Ralph Klein.
But this time around they are backing the Liberal candidate.
“I’m a Progressive Conservative supporter and I wanted a more progressive candidate.”
“I’m a Progressive Conservative and I wanted a more progressive candidate,” Pat Moore told the Calgary Herald. “If this is the kind of candidate Calgary Centre wants, I don’t belong there.” Moore also said she didn’t like the way the nomination process was controlled by the party hierarchy.
The Liberal candidate is Harvey Locke, whose roots stretch back to a pioneer family that arrived in this region even before the railway. A lawyer and an active conservationist, writer and photographer, Locke was for several years the volunteer president of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Association.
Liberal MPs, including Bob Rae and Justin Trudeau, have been flocking to Calgary to campaign with him, no doubt delirious at just the thought of electing a Liberal right in Stephen Harper’s backyard.
Chris Turner, the Green candidate, is a dynamic performer who knows how to rouse a crowd. He is also a journalist who has written extensively about environmental issues, and a well known civic activist.
Joan Crockatt seems to be running a secret campaign. There is no campaign office, at least not one that is open to the public.
Turner has attracted a lot of people from Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s campaign team. And like Nenshi, he is feverishly using social media in hopes of attracting people who usually don’t turn out to vote.
The NDP came into the race late in the game. Its candidate — Dan Meades — has been an ardent and effective advocate for the working poor and homeless. Meades is also the harshest critic of the Conservatives (who hold every seat in Calgary) and delights in pointing out during public forums that once again Joan Crockatt is nowhere to be seen.
And it’s true. Crockatt seems to be running a secret campaign. There is no campaign office, at least not one that is open to the public. There have been several public forums — all packed to the rafters — but she has shown up at only one. Crockatt even refused to appear at a forum on Sunday organized by the mayor’s office. Nenshi himself publicly took her to task for that.
Perhaps her party polls have her way out in front. But other polls, while not entirely reliable because they are based on automated phone responses, indicate that Crockatt’s support has dropped 15 points since the beginning of the campaign. According to the latest Forum Research Poll released on the weekend, Crockatt leads with 35 percent, Locke stands at 30, Turner at 25. Meades is way back with 8 percent.
If anyone but a Conservative does grab this seat on November 26, it will be the third clear sign that politics in Alberta are shifting. The election of Nenshi and then Alison Redford and her red Tories being the first two.
But even if the Conservative does take it, the undercurrents of opposition are likely to keep churning until the next opportunity to crack open Calgary’s Conservative mask presents itself.
About Gillian Steward
Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and journalist, and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald.
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