It was obvious the writing was on the wall when Gil McGowan summed up his pitch at Saturday’s NDP leadership forum: “If I don’t raise another $50,000 soon,” he told the audience, “I’m toast.”
So it was not much of a surprise yesterday morning when Mr. McGowan connected the dots and announced in a letter to supporters that “Sadly, I’m writing today to let you know that I’ve made the hard decision to suspend my leadership campaign. Paying the final instalment of the $60,000 entry fee — which was due last night at midnight — has proven too much for me.”
Mr. McGowan’s campaign was always a bit of a long shot.
The commentariat pretty much wrote off his candidacy from the start, presumably for being out of tune with the new New Democrat coalition – whatever it turns out to be – cobbled together by Rachel Notley through her near decade at the party’s helm.
And as a person who spoke his mind quickly and often undiplomatically when nettled, Mr. McGowan became a frequent target for the United Conservative Party’s online army of trolls and bots – not that he ever seemed to mind very much. Well, as Oscar Wilde famously said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, and people certainly have been talking about Mr. McGowan.
The president of the Alberta Federation of Labour for nearly 20 years, Mr. McGowan pitched a strategy of winning back working class voters who have moved to the UCP and other conservative parties in recent years and re-establishing the NDP as the party of workers.
He was the only candidate who seriously raised the issue of the Alberta NDP’s faltering relationship with its traditional labour constituency – and what to do about the drift away from the party, as he put it in yesterday’s letter, of “working Albertans with high school, college and trades educations (both inside and outside the two big cities) who, polls show, are supporting the UCP over the NDP.”
“Under Rachel Notley the NDP built a powerful coalition that almost won the last election, but that coalition has a hole in it,” Mr. McGowan said the day he launched his bid to lead the party. “There was a missing piece, and that missing piece is workers.”
“In other words,” he said yesterday, “the traditional workers’ party needs to find a way to shore up its support among workers. As I’ve been saying over and over, they are the missing piece in the coalition we need to build in order to defeat the UCP.”
That is bound to be dismissed as nostalgia by some, passed off with an embarrassed shrug by others, and it may even result in some serious commentary from veteran New Democrats from the party’s traditional labour wing, but Mr. McGowan is right that the NDP needs to find a way to bring those voters back into its big tent or fail again.
The only other candidate to offer a concrete proposal on the form the NDP coalition should take after Ms. Notley departs was Rakhi Pancholi – who dropped out of the leadership race on March 27, the day Mr. McGowan dropped in.
Her answer was for the party to sever all its ties with the federal NDP as a way to get the UCP to quit trying to tie the provincial party to federal policies unpopular in Alberta, or at least unpopular with the UCP base. Media loved the idea. Traditional New Democrats were more wary.
Ms. Pancholi threw her support behind front-runner Naheed Nenshi, the former Calgary mayor, who has been cautious about promoting that idea too vigorously. He’ll consider it, he’s said, and ask members what they think.
Having run a creditable campaign that spoke to the values of a significant segment of the Alberta NDP’s most loyal supporters, the remaining four candidates may well now vie for Mr. McGowan’s benediction.
It remains to be seen if he’ll wear his heart on his sleeve or be tactical and cautious about whom he endorses, if anyone. As of last night, Mr. McGowan said he hadn’t endorsed any other candidate.
Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse was quick to publish a statement thanking Mr. McGowan for running and reaching out directly to his labour constituency.
“The opportunity for a strong labour-NDP coalition in Alberta has never been greater,” she said. “Improving wages, strengthening working conditions, and expanding union rights requires labour and the Alberta NDP to be organized and vocal together – at the bargaining table and politically at the doors.”
In a best case scenario, all of these leadership candidates would be brought onto the NDP team for the next election. Their different perspectives are needed.
Hey DJC, regarding the trend of the working class migrating to right wing parties that political observers would say most definitely do NOT have the best interests of the workers at heart, while there has been some explanation of the reasons for this, do you or your learned readers have concrete solutions to reverse this?
We all have friends and family members that are on the lower end of the economic spectrum, yet they are some of the most ardent UCP/CPC/Republican supporters. You can patiently explain that in actuality, they pay little to no income taxes, and are net beneficiaries of government social programs, yet nothing will change their minds. We can all agree that by now the whole ‘Trickle Down Theory’ of economics has been disproven, and billionaires really don’t have your best interests at heart, exemplified in Jeff Bezos living the billionaire lifestyle, while many of his employees need to use food banks to get by. Using the stereotypical image of the blue collar chap leafing through the daily paper at the local diner, which unfortunately these days is a Postmedia publication, with its right wing slant (btw, the NP columnists seem especially unhinged and fact free in their rants these days, even before Rex shuffled off this mortal coil), AM talk radio in the truck, with Fox News playing on the black & white TV, one can see that that environment contributes to the right wing creep of the populace of modest means.
But what else is it? Hopelessness? The overpromising and under delivering of the more progressive politicians? Algorithms driving them to articles which support right wing views on social media sites? Folks falling for the ‘magic beans’ and simple solutions to complex problems offered by PP, Smith and Drumph? Not to go there but, willful ignorance, xenophobia, or the new environment that allows one to say the quiet parts out loud? If the NDP, amongst their other challenges, can crack that nut, that will definitely enhance their electoral chances come May (now October) 2027.
Dave: Brian Mason has some thoughts about this, reprinted in tonight’s post with a link to his full blog. DJC
We live in a complex world, not necessarily complicated but complex. There are choices for everything, in abundance. Multi-ethnic; organic or not; private or public education, health, insurance; information overload, some news, most propaganda; online dating, pickup bars, porn at a click; food, booze, drugs on call 7/24; anything you could ever want, even more than can be imagined is available for the asking and a price.
This cornucopia is presented as a modern day wonder, an unalloyed good for all. It does require one to make choices though. And choices come in 2 flavors; good and bad and they are not evenly distributed.
Making good choices is work, hard work. It’s helped by education and experience. Experience can be borrowed from well-placed friends and other professionals. Not easily accessible to many trades-workers.
Still, at the end of the day, it is an individual’s choice. And it is hard to do. So, many just put it off.
It seems in this world that leaving decision making up to chance favors bad choices. Politically, the bad actors, the bad choices know they are bad for almost all but themselves, so they lie, they cheat, they cover-up. They have been known, for centuries, as carpet-baggers and charlatans. This is today’s conservatives. And republicans and ucp.
After a long hard day’s work, with a few drinks and hungry for dinner, it’s just easier to accept the facile, easy-sounding nonsense than to rationally wade through all the offerings and make a sensible choice.
It even seems to work fine for a few years. Until it doesn’t.
Not to worry. Gil will be back as Minister of Labour or of Energy. He’s broadened his name and appeal and he ain’t going nowhere but up to a cabinet post. His Diversification plan is a blueprint for Alberta’s economic future. He is very valuable to Albertans and the party, but he was never Head Kahuna material.
It is true there are holes in the NDP coalition and McGowan would have helped with one of them, by understanding and being more relatable to unionized workers. No doubt he worried conservatives, because he would be hard to attack as being an urban educated elitist, although I suspect they would have come up with something else.
However, these holes are not a recent problem and are similar to that many other left wing parties elsewhere face. In many other places, the NDP have also become in recent years more the party of the urban and more educated and less so of others. Here in Alberta, there is an even longer history of many unionized workers voting for more conservative parties. For instance, I don’t think the NDP has ever won a seat in Fort McMurray.
I suspect the reasons for this are varied and complex, but go way beyond who the leadership NDP candidates currently are. To start with, trade schools don’t encourage political thought and discussion beyond the conventional in the same way that say universities do. Secondly, those such as in the trades, while not as formally educated, do know how to read their pay stubs. They often have good paying jobs and are aware of all the tax and other deductions from their pay and certainly those that work in the private sector are more willing to question that. Third, a lot of the skilled trades jobs in Alberta are related in some way to the energy sector and the Federal NDP in particular has been far from energy industry friendly.
I would say another gaping hole for the Alberta NDP is getting support from rural areas and this one proved fatal in the last election, with over half the seats outside the two biggest cities. Lest we forget another one of the founding groups of the CCF, the predecessor to the NDP, were rural farmers. However, these days you would be hard pressed to find a rural area in Alberta where the NDP has great support.
All of this is important, because in a two party system like the one we have now, the party more successful at building or maintaining coalitions wins. So I do feel Notley was on to something in trying to expand the NDP coalition in Alberta, but even though it was close in the last election, conservatives had the advantage of doing this for decades even though they have frittered away much of their advantage in recent years.
I hope whoever wins the NDP leadership will realize all this, work hard and skilfully at both retaining traditional support and expanding it.
The UCP are an abysmal government, and that’s an understatement. We didn’t know how good we had things with Rachel Notley and the NDP. They led much the same way that Peter Lougheed did, and that was very beneficial.
Although I am supporting Sarah Hoffman, I was impressed with Gil’s contributions. I do disagree with the elitism charge that suggested that urban voters are elitist against rural voters when you could argue it goes both ways. There has been a lot of glorifying of the rural population that goes back quite some time that doesn’t help in anyone. Now that doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues that have been neglected by the New Democrats but I don’t think that the UCP has been showing a lot of concern for them either. This is the time to create a set of policies that will benefit both rural and urban people alike.
Does it really matter if the Alberta NDP disassociates itself from the Federal NDP for the sole purpose of giving the UCP one less talking point? With the tenuous hold on reality that Smith and the UCP exhibit daily, they will connect the two whether or not there is any connection.
Apropos of nothing, has anyone else noticed while listening to the podcast, “West of Centre” that Kathleen Petty and her guests laugh and giggle throughout her podcasts while discussing the latest UCP moves which are usurping democracy in this province? Do these people not realize what is happening or are they afraid to say what is really going on and show up on the UCP radar?
It’s a mystery to me why the labour vote is running to the likes of Doug Ford and Skippy Pollivere; is it because they present themselves and having the common touch and the interests of the everyday person? It’s a good act that everyone seems to be falling for these days. The notion that a (wannabe) billionaire, multiple baby daddy, malignant narcissist and pathological liar could find his way into the US presidency was a far fetched one. But it shows how far we have fallen and no one cares anymore.
But shouldn’t organized labour leadership warn their members about the likes of these characters instead of promoting them as being worthy of the labour vote? Unless they have been co-opted by powerful interests outside of labour circles, who couldn’t care less about worker’s rights, decent pay, and civilized working conditions. If certain labour leaders prefer to have a tee-off with the big wigs, can they be trusted with the consent of the membership?
And there’s the claims that workers want nothing to do with social justice. There’s nothing wrong with social justice, provided it doesn’t become the only issue Worse. It’s become the more important issue while wages and conditions stagnate. LGBTQ2S got to eat, too.
This one is really off the topic here but didn’t the UCP mandate all post secondary institutions had to go by the “Chicago Principles” for free speech? Perhaps the one proviso that negates the mandate is if someone brings along a hammer to pound in tent pegs in which case the “popo” shows up looking like they are mobilizing for Iwo Jima. As an aside, I better take the hammer out of my car, lest it be treated as a weapon of mass destruction if a cop sees it.
JE: I did mention the Chicago Principles in an earlier post. I went to the Palestine solidarity demo at the U of A today and realized that I was carrying nine deadly weapons with me – two each of hands, feet, knees and elbows, plus one forehead suitable for breaking noses in a pinch! I believe the latter is called a Glasgow kiss in Scotland and a Liverpool kiss south of Hadrian’s Wall. DJC
Pity the NDP set the fund raising bar so high. Gil is an insightful man with a long range vision on the energy transition. He also said what many of us feel about our disappointment with Notley on so many issues.
In the mean time Alberta is starting to look like a collection of fools to more and more people. Here is a devastating look at the latest on the Alberta hydrogen follies:
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/05/14/atcos-proposed-edmonton-hydrogen-subdivision-would-pay-4-10-times-current-cost-for-heat/