The Alberta NDP’s worst-kept secret has now been confirmed: Party Leader Naheed Nenshi will run in the by-election to replace former leader and premier Rachel Notley as MLA for the Edmonton-Strathcona riding.
Ms. Notley’s resignation as an MLA took effect on Monday, but even before she’d announced her plan to leave politics on Dec. 12, NDP circles were abuzz with talk of Mr. Nenshi seeking to replace her in the inner-city Edmonton riding.
Mr. Nenshi’s intention was made public in a notice to New Democratic Party members in the riding stating a nomination meeting will be held on Jan. 22 and that “there is one candidate eligible for nomination” – to wit, Mr. Nenshi.
Mr. Nenshi also posted on various social media platforms yesterday announcing his intention to run. “With our former leader Rachel Notley’s retirement, I have an opportunity to join our MLAs in the Legislature,” he said. “I believe Alberta New Democrats can be a thoughtful government-in-waiting with real solutions for Alberta families.
“That’s why I’m officially announcing today that I’m putting my name forward for nomination as the Alberta NDP candidate in Edmonton-Strathcona for an upcoming by-election.”
Just to be completely clear, though, no one else will be putting their name forward for the NDP nomination in Edmonton-Strathcona, even if they wanted to. “According to the Alberta NDP constitution,” the announcement of the nomination meeting in 19 days said unironically, “if there are no other approved candidates eligible to seek the nomination 21 days prior to the meeting, the approved candidate will be acclaimed.”
The plan makes sense both strategically and tactically: It saves the former Calgary mayor who overwhelmingly won the NDP leadership contest last June from having to ask an NDP MLA in the province’s largest city to make way for him, and it means he’ll be running in one of the two safest NDP seats in the province.
But, practically speaking, at this point Mr. Nenshi had little choice but to run for Ms. Notley’s former seat. The United Conservative Party government has been making metaphorical hay while the winter sun shines, mocking Mr. Nenshi for not seeking a seat in the Dec. 18 Lethbridge by-election won by the NDP’s Rob Miyashiro.
This is pretty meaningless, of course, because whatever Mr. Nenshi does, the UCP will attack him for it. Indeed, no sooner had he announced his intention to run in Edmonton than UCP bots on the open sewer of social media sites known as X were calling him a coward for not making someone let him run in Calgary.
This, at least, will encourage the UCP to go back to their hysterical attacks on Mr. Nenshi’s record as Calgary’s mayor, which has had him living rent-free in the heads of the governing party’s leadership for years.
While there are bound to be a few grumbles that Mr. Nenshi’s upcoming acclamation amounts to “guided democracy,” letting a new leader seek a riding nomination unopposed is close to standard operating practice in most political parties. It’s just unusual to put it right out there so obviously.
Mr. Nenshi almost certainly could have won no matter who ran against him, although a case could be made that the contest would have been a distraction from what the party needs to be focusing on right now.
Regardless, being so open about it seems like an odd way to spend political capital, although to be fair, with his slam-dunk 86-per-cent victory in June, Mr. Nenshi has a lot of political capital to spend. Like any fortune, though, political capital doesn’t always last as long as one might expect.
Be that as it may, it is widely assumed that an agreement has been sought and made with candidates who were interested in running to replace Ms. Notley that Mr. Nenshi will seek a seat in Calgary for the next general election. So there will likely be a real nomination battle in Edmonton-Strathcona before the next Alberta election, which is now scheduled to take place on Oct. 18, 2027, but could and may happen sooner if it’s convenient for the UCP.
In the meantime, it won’t hurt Mr. Nenshi to be seen representing a riding in Edmonton, where unconfirmed reports of private polls showing Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party making some gains have been circulating.
“This doesn’t mean I’m leaving Calgary behind,” Mr. Nenshi promised in his social media post. “While still proudly Calgarian, I’m already dividing my time between the two cities and I’m looking forward to learning more about Edmonton.”
Unfortunately, the date of the by-election is up to Premier Smith, who showed willingness to play silly games with the timing of the Lethbridge by-election to squeeze out some advantage for the UCP’s candidate – to no avail in the event. By law, the by-election must take place by June 30.
Once elected, Mr. Nenshi will replace Christina Gray as Leader of the Opposition in the Legislature.
The NDP nomination meeting will take place at 7 p.m. on Jan. 22 in the Hazledean Communirty League hall.
By the way, the other safest seat for the Opposition Party would be the one now known as Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood, held for nearly 20 years by former NDP leader Brian Mason and now represented Janis Irwin, who is surely the most popular and well-known MLA in the Alberta Legislature.
It is good that Nenshi is taking the next step in leading the Alberta NDP. Of course wherever he ran there will be others disappointed they didn’t get a chance to run instead, but this riding seems like a good choice. A long serving MLA is retiring, so no need to try get a newer MLA to go.
It also will raise his profile in Edmonton. He is already very well known in Calgary. While the mainstream conservative leaning Alberta media has done its best to ignore him while he has travelled to many smaller places across Alberta, it wil be harder to ignore him once he goes head to head with Smith in the Legislature.
Of course Smith may again try play games to delay this as long as possible, but that will not make her look strong or confident, just small and petty. Unfortunately for Smith she will not be able to delay this time until almost Christmas and if things go according to plan Nenshi will have the wind in his sails just in time to head to Calgary for the next Stampede.
Danielle Smith wants to keep herself and the UCP in power for as long as possible. Unfortunately, for her and the UCP, Naheed Nenshi will finish them off. Better for Alberta, because it’s true Conservatives, like we knew with Peter Lougheed, who are supporting the NDP.
I’d say the second safest seat for the NDP is Edmonton City Centre. David Shepherd won that riding in 2023 with 75% of the vote, quite a bit more than Janis Irwin’s meager 71%.
Marlin: I’ll say much the same thing to you as I just said to Robert Bott, with the caveat that I believe Ms. Irwin enjoys a kind of province-wide popularity and recognition that Mr. Shepherd and Ms. Ganley do not possess. But that, of course, is just my own opinion. DJC
Janis Irwin is certainly a popular MLA, but I think it’s arguable that the second-safest NDP seat in Alberta might be Calgary Mountain View. Kathleen Ganley won 65 percent of the vote here in the 2023 election — the highest ND vote total of any riding — and 47 percent in 2019. The inner-city constituency had previously been in the progressive hands of nominally Liberal David Swann since 2004.
Bob Hawkesworth held the seat for the NDP from 1986 to 1993, with as much as 52 percent of the vote. The progressive vote split between the Liberals and NDs in the next three elections and handed the seat to the PCs, but that’s unlikely to occur again with our current bipolar party alignment.
Robert: That is fair, and while I won’t amend the piece, which would be silly at this point, I’ll bear it in mind in future conversations of this sort. However, please also take a look at my response to Marlin on this same point. DJC
Honestly with a certain percentage of the folks that live in this province Irwin is even more popular than Rachel Notley; She’s a superstar, and the NDP would be wise to keep that in mind.
I will be curious to see when Ms. Smith calls the by-election. After criticising Naheed Nenshi for not seeking a seat immediately, I would say it is incumbent on her to call the by-election sooner rather than later.
History shows us that Calgary politicians always shower their home city with capital and promotional attention, once they achieve the high office; provincially and federally.
Nenshi will never genuinely know the riding or its constituents. next general election a Calgary seat will be made available and he will run there and, if he wins it and the election, he will do what comes naturally and ignore the provincial capital.
brad: Ignoring the provincial capital is what the UCP have done. Edmontonians who didn’t support these phony Conservatives and Reformers that are in the UCP, lacks important things, such as a new hospital that the UCP promised would come if they were re-elected in 2023.
DJC, slightly OT but you started it. Why do you keep slagging X as “the open sewer of social media sites?” I’ve never used it – is it because X doesn’t censor its users enough or is it something else? Twitter was a very popular platform so I’m thinking it has something to do with Elon Musk, but what?
Mickey: There are several reasons for this, among them the toleration and even active encouragement by the site’s current management of open racism, threats, abusive language, gratuitous insults, hatred of identifiable groups, defamation of individuals, and the like. It is an ugly, distressing place to spend time, although still necessary to peruse from time to time. Freedom of speech and opinion can be be permitted without encouraging genuinely anti-social behaviour. In addition, again under the guise of freedom of speech, it tolerates a lot of intentionally false news – although, in fairness, the same thing can be said nowadays of mainstream media as well. Finally, and importantly, it cannot really be said to promote a free exchange of ideas because the algorithms now in use are designed to throttle what generally would be described as progressive opinions – and that includes not only social changes the likes of you and I might be uncomfortable with but arguments about the benefits of union membership and socialist economics – and to promote outright fascism. I believe it is absolutely fair to describe X as an open sewer, and I am confident that if you spent any time there you would agree. DJC
DJC: Fair enough, I’m not spending any time there so thx for the rundown.
David Climenhaga: I have heard people say that Twitter (now X), has become very toxic. It is, and without any proper controls in place, it will get worse as time goes by. Criticism of it is justified.
When I first joined Twitter in 2012 – January, in fact, so 13 years ago this month – it was the online “town square”, where a wide variety of news and opinions were shared, discussed and debated. Were there trolls? Sure. But you could block them, and report the most offensive if there were objective grounds to do so, such as racial slurs and abuse, hate speech, etc.
However, ever since Elon Musk bought it out and then, some time later, rebranded it as ‘X’, the “town square” has been taken over by a white-supremacist skinhead street gang that harasses users they disagree with and spray-paints their posts to obscure them from view. And, even if you block harassing posts or users, they can still see them. So longtime users have been searching for a new place.
Just over a year ago, many Twitter/X users thought Mastodon would be that place. It was welcoming and inviting and had strong content moderation processes. But getting onto it was a bit complicated, and as time has gone by not many people have gone there. It’s kind of a very chic but very niche coffee shop tucked into a back alley, with only a half-dozen round tables, an obscure clientele and a secret handshake to get a regular seat.
More recently there has been a trend towards going to Bluesky, as our host has done. To [over?]stretch the analogy, Bluesky seems to be developing into a new, nicer “town square”, where the skinheads ruling X aren’t welcome. But it’s early days yet. Hopefully it stays that way.
Finally, I still think I’ll need to stay on X, at least as long as some key institutions I follow remain there — such as local municipalities. I just need to winnow out my follows.
This is good news. Naheed Nenshi will be able to use his position as Leader of the Opposition to expose UCP corruption and incompetence to a wider audience than can be reached through NDP news releases.
If the NDP can capitalize on this (and that’s a huge if), maybe Alberta will be able to become something more than a backward petrostate.
Nenshi’s decision to run in Edmonton-Strathcona makes sense. There is no good reason for Danielle Smith to delay a byelection call. Find a warm UCP body to put on the ballot, print some lawn signs, and let’s go.
Albertans need Naheed Nenshi to take a seat. Now. He can always choose to run in a Calgary riding at election time. I’m happy with this decision and wish I could vote for him. Looking forward to that. Suppose Danielle will play silly-buggers with this byelection too. She is a dangerous & petty politician.
Trudy G. Danielle Smith is very afraid of Naheed Nenshi. They have a history that goes back over 30 years. She will not play any games around him. He knows her very well, and he is aware that she is so good at telling lies. Even though Danielle Smith shortened the Legislature sittings even lower than what they were already, if Naheed Nenshi is in a session with her, she will trip and fall. It’s game over for her.
I actually thought Joe Ceci would vacate his seat to allow Nenshi to win in Calgary but this works too. The other thing he needs to do is get out to talk to the voters in rural ridings to help build the support they do have. The NDP needs something like a Howard Dean 50 state strategy where the NDP will work to compete in every riding even though they won’t win every one. The goal should be to increase the votes there in order to make the victories not so huge. If every riding became competitive then it shows that voters can’t taken for granted.
It’s a very safe seat, but also well outside of Calgary. Seems to me that Calgary is the fortress that must be breached.
I’m sure about the wisdom behind this, unless the UCP are planning an early election?
Will Danielle Smith call the by-election for Reading Week, or wait until university classes end? Perhaps another final exam election is coming? How about convocation week?
The University of Alberta is not part of this constituency, but many of the area’s walk-up apartments are home to students, with direct bus routes to the main campus and Campus Saint-Jean.
Gaming the timing of the Lethbridge-West by-election certainly did not work in the UCP’s favor. They might as well get on with it.
Nenshi’s delay is now fraught with expectation. If he doesn’t come out of the gate with fire and fury, woe be upon us!