Unfair focus on UCP over disqualified candidates
By Medicine Hat News Opinon on October 19, 2018.
The degree of hype around election nominees and candidates who fall from grace in this pre-election phase seems to be based on the party rather than the seriousness of the individual’s unacceptability. This week the Alberta Party disqualified its Edmonton-Ellerslie candidate because he had attended an event that was critical of an “Indian Supreme Court decision to allow women of menstruating age to attend an ancient temple.” The Alberta Party took action and the news did not appear to even feature at the end of any news broadcasts. There was no condemnation about the kind of people the Alberta Party is attracting to its ranks and rightly so. It stands in sharp contrast to the way the UCP has been attacked when any of its nominees or candidates have been tossed. When it emerged about a week ago that several UCP nomination candidates had been photographed with Soldiers of Odin at a pub night, it was the focus of the province for a period. Premier Rachel Notley found it necessary to take time out of her extremely busy schedule to hold a press conference on the subject. In the end, one of the three candidates was advised by the UCP that he had been disqualified from the race. If you take a look at the Elections Alberta website you will see all potential candidates listed by party and by riding. When a contestant or candidate withdraws, or is axed by the party, this information is also listed. If the UCP has had more publicity about unsuitable contestants it may not just be a reflection of the type of candidate the party attracts but simply the volume of contestants/candidates it is currently wielding. According to the Elections Alberta website the NDP currently has 35 of 87 ridings listed, involving 39 people/contestants/nominees. There are only three ridings where two or more people are competing in the same riding. So far 20 people have been endorsed by the NDP, two have withdrawn, and one was not accepted by the party. The Alberta Party has 52 of the 87 ridings in the province listed with 65 individuals seeking to be contestants/nominees. A total of 39 have been endorsed, seven have withdrawn, and three were not accepted by the party. In contrast to the NDP and the Alberta Party, the UCP is actively working on securing candidates for all 87 ridings. Many of the ridings have six or seven people seeking the nomination for that riding. A total of 305 people are involved in the process. The total number already endorsed is 43 and 33 have withdrawn. A total of 10 of the 305 were “unendorsed” or were not accepted by the party. To summarize, the people not accepted by their party: NDP one out of 39 people, Alberta Party three out of 65, UCP 10 out of 305. It appears clear that the UCP is not attracting more than its fair share of unacceptable contestants but rather an unfair focus on them because it stands the best chance, according to polls, of forming the next government. (Gillian Slade is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to https://www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions, email her at gslade@medicinehatnews.com or call her at 403-528-8635.) 16-15
So, basically the NDP and the mainstream media are doing free candidate vetting for the UCP? This doesn’t sound like a bad deal for the UCP. The UCP gets bozo eruptions identified in advance of the election campaign and even before the party nominates its candidate, so by the time the election rolls around nobody remembers (or cares) what some candidate who was never nominated by the party said or did. If the NDP were smart they would take tabs of the controversial candidates, keep dead silent and then wait until a week before the election before saying anything in the event that any of them get nominated. Maybe the NDP is doing this as well, but by crying wolf now about all of the bozo eruptions they are going to de-sensitize people later when it actually matters. To be honest, it reminds me a lot of how the US democrats kept calling Trump a literal Nazi and then it lost its effect and then they had nothing left to play. It’s a amateurish strategy and is not something that will get a party re-elected in my view.