Is Brian Jean going to take down Jason Kenney? And can the United Conservative Party win the next Alberta election?
Those are compelling questions with no certain answers.
Despite what pollsters and pundits are saying, recent events didn’t make the picture much clearer.
Brian Jean, former contender for the UCP leadership and once again Kenney’s most vocal opponent, won the UCP nomination for the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche by-election. The by-election will happen by March 2022.
Jean took the nomination by 529 votes, compared to Kenney’s preferred candidate Joshua Gogo, who received 250 votes.
Pundits are calling this a landslide and very bad news for Kenney.
How much can be assumed from Jean’s victory remains to be seen, however. The UCP candidate in the last election who’s resignation is prompting the by-election, won more than 9,800 votes in the 2019 general election.
Given the enormous spotlight on the nomination race and Jean’s aggressive and highly publicized campaign, it’s surprising there hasn’t been some musing about the rather paltry turnout for the nomination contest.
Jean is now thumping up and down the province on his campaign to unseat Kenney. He’s turning up in end of year interviews with all the provincial columnists and radio show hosts calling on the premier to resign.
Kenney meanwhile is not shy of the public eye, holding many press conferences on the recent economic upswing and the looming worries about the Omicron Covid strain. But the premier is maintaining a stony silence about Jean’s recent victory in Fort McMurray or his noisy leadership campaign.
While the premier did take a few potshots at Jean early in the Fort Mac race, he largely stayed out of the fray. He may be just hoping Jean will burn himself out.
Technically Kenney, as party leader, could refuse to sign Jean’s nomination papers for the by-election. Or if Jean wins, Kenney could turf him from caucus on the pretext that Jean is a danger to UCP unity. Both scenarios are unlikely, however.
There are enough vocal malcontents in caucus that singling out Jean would be an admission of fear from the premier. Plus the UCP admin folks kept a tight rein on the nomination contest, so trying to declare it invalid might cause even more of a split in the party.
Kenney faces a formal leadership review on April 9. If he were to punt Jean out of caucus right after a by-election victory in March, that too could unleash an even more divisive battle on the April convention floor.
A poll at the beginning of December suggested Albertans might be slightly more willing to vote UCP if Jean were the leader instead of Kenney. But the numbers weren’t startling and Jean still has plenty of time to make a major error, given how visible a target he is making of himself.
Jean may be an irritant, but Kenney so far hasn’t given any hint he’s breaking a major sweat about the threat.
Meanwhile in the past couple of weeks the premier has reversed course on some of his more eye popping policies, perhaps to buoy his own popularity and that of the UCP government.
He tugged a few threads loose on Covid restrictions this week to make Christmas a bit merrier for Albertans, but unlike his “best summer ever” declarations in August, his tone was measured and the changes relatively minor.
The UCP government has had a history of warring with the provincial civil service since the moment it was elected. But quietly this week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees signed a tentative deal which will give them job security until the end of next year and modest raises in 2023. It appears the UCP is clearing some of the acrimony out of the arena before the 2023 election campaign begins in earnest.
Kenney isn’t giving up his leadership position without a fight and the UCP is not throwing in the towel just because of historically low popularity numbers. The struggle for both the premier and the party isn’t over yet.
