Conservative leadership race may be over for all but Oberg and Dinning
Albertans surely owe Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Lyle Oberg one big round of applause for having the courage to pull the plug on Premier Ralph Klein’s frantic determination to cling to power for as long as possible no matter what.
Even former provincial treasurer Jim Dinning, said to be the slight frontrunner in the leadership stakes, and the five MLAs running for the leadership, must have privately got down on bended knees and said a little thank-you prayer to the Brooks MLA.
Indeed, Oberg points out since Dinning has already won the endorsement of 27 MLAs, the growing frustration within the PC caucus over Klein’s dithering and doddering is evident.
Klein had expected to again win overwhelming support from delegates to the party convention in Calgary in April—likely the 90% approval rating he was used to getting—but when 45% of the vote turned against him it was over.
Oblivious to everything—after suggesting his government was on auto-pilot and needed do nothing but breeze along—our fading premier was stunned when the vote came in.
Not so Oberg and the many delegates who had started to yawn over this charade.
“The vote was revealing, but not surprising. It was what most of us had been hearing,” he said.
“It wasn’t actually a vote against Ralph personally, but against a two-year leadership race,” Oberg told me as he opened his Calgary campaign office.
The former family doctor also has a campaign office in Edmonton, one in Brooks and six hard-to-miss semi-trailers with his photograph and campaign slogan—“A Real Step Forward”—touring the province.
This is not a campaign being run on a shoestring.
It’s also a campaign by a tenacious man—former education minister, former transportation and infrastructure minister—and as mentioned above, the man who, urged by his constituents, put an end to the ridiculous scenario of Klein putting shackles on his cabinet ministers and leadership candidates in order to indulge himself.
The “premier aspirant” seemingly has no rancour, even though he lost his cabinet position and was ejected from the party caucus for simply telling the truth.
He does point out the government would have been in a “state of paralysis” had Klein insisted on staying in until late 2007 or early 2008.
The Liberals, under Kevin Taft, must have been chortling over this fiasco.
Or perhaps weeping tears knowing had they not been under the Liberal banner, this was a government on the precipice of defeat.
It had lost direction and Klein had become a caricature of himself.
Again, Oberg notes the MLAs who moved to Dinning without hesitating and the growing number committing themselves to him, demonstrates the depth of uneasiness in the caucus over Klein’s continued leadership.
Actually, what may well have sparked that uneasiness was the loss in the 2004 provincial election of some 200,000 votes compared to the 2001 ballot.
Either former PC voters had shifted their loyalties or decided to stay home and not vote.
Significantly, while the party had 80,000 members back in 1992 when Klein took over, that number is reputed to have fallen precipitously. No one will say how far. It’s those lost 200,000 votes and members Oberg wants to bring back to the fold.
A recent Ipsos-Reid poll gave Dinning 28% and Oberg 23% when respondents were asked who was the best candidate to become leader and likely provincial premier.
Dave Hancock came in at 9% and Ted Morton, Mark Norris and Ed Stelmach each at 4%. Alana DeLong counted for nothing.
Some analysts contend the poll didn’t matter too much since it surveyed Albertans generally, not party members who will be voting come the leadership convention.
But there’s a flaw in this reasoning, and it is Dinning and Oberg have substantial name recognition across the province while the other candidates have little.
If average Albertans have only a slight idea as to who the candidates are, aside from Dinning and Oberg, that shows none of them has taken off. They are no better known than Taft, head of a moribund party.
Basically put, Dinning and Oberg have broken from the pack, and the others are already almost also-rans.
Though the leadership convention date hasn’t yet been set—Klein won’t be tendering his intention to resign until September—the race may already be over for anyone except Oberg and Dinning.
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