Betty Unger the PC Senator in waiting is quoted by Jason Fekete of the Calgary Herald:
“(Wildrose Alliance) certainly have got a good leader. In terms of politicians, you could say she’s a superstar. She really is.” (bold added)
As the postmortem of the PC convention continues they are still worried about the Alliance, and well they should be. As they sober up after all their various hospitality suites they got a rude awakening.
Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith is the featured guest at a sold-out fundraising breakfast today sponsored by FirstEnergy Capital, an energy industry investment bank, with a few hundred of Calgary’s oil and gas players expected to attend. She’s also scheduled to speak Tuesday at a heavy oil conference in the city and make a “major” energy-related policy announcement.
Even more interesting is that FirstEnergy was co-founded Brett Wilson the dissatisfied Tory who wanted a leadership review. In other words another major source of funding may be switching sides.
Where the money is going is important. Because a key to the Alberta PC victories is the funding by the Calgary Oil industry. Where other parties are fighting elections with under the 1 million dollar mark the Tories always had a nice fat bankroll.
For example in the 2004 election campaign, no party spent over a million. Other than the PCs who spent around $2 million on the campaign. Even with that they still ended the campaign with $3 million in the bank. Which by the way is what they started with.
It was also relevant this weekend as one watched the array of sponsors and money coming from corporate Canada to the Tory purse you could feel how different it made their Annual General Meeting. It was something a party like the Alberta Alliance or now the Wildrose Alliance could only have dreamed of previously.
So as the opponents begin to shift from rebellion within the party to a new party all together the Alberta paradigm may again be about to shake the foundations once more.
See here, here and here for more on this. Makes you wonder if in one of his trips to China Ralph Klein left a curse for those who wanted him out.
“May you live in interesting times”
Well politics in Alberta is very interesting indeed.
Tags: Alberta, Danielle Smith, Politics
