Time for a new NDP Leader in Alberta

I was responding to a line in a earlier post that said the Alberta NDP had been polling at 20% for most of THE PAST YEAR - that is what i was disputing. i am well aware that the Alberta NDP was in the 20s or higher 25 years ago. But that was definietly not the case in the past year. 

 Here is my advice: 1) Get a new leader. Brian Mason is a great man. I have enormous respect for him. When he came in to the job of NDP leader he had a decade of experience on Edmonton city council under his belt. He is and was a man of substance and electoral means (it is not easy to stay on council that long, especially as a left-winger). One of Mason's first campaigns as leader they put up billboards in Edmonton that read, "Want to send Klein a message? Here is your messenger." These billboards carried a picture of Brian Mason. It is time for a new messenger. <snip>

Another good candidate would be David Eggens. He used to be president of the Friends of medicare group. He is back as a MLA. I even have a campaign slogan for him:

 "Vote for Dave, he is a good Eggen.

I'm clearly a late-comer to this discussion, but I thought I'd contribute something.  It is true, as previous posters have noted, that AB NDs are very loathe to do in their leaders - an admirable trait they share with most other NDP sections in the country (BC being the notable exception).

That said, Alberta New Democrat leaders often also have this bad habit of staying on way past their best before date.  Ray Martin did make history by bringing the Party to 16 seats in 1986, however he did not succeed in building on that success.  Riding associations remained moribund, and little organization was done outside of Edmonton to expand the base.  In the 1989 election, the Party was caught completely unprepared, and while our seat count remained constant, our popular vote slid precipitously through the campaign.  We ended up getting fewer votes than the upstart Liberals under former Edmonton Mayor Laurence Decore.  Had that campaign lasted another week, we'd have lost Official Opposition status.

Rather than taking that scare as his cue to pass the torch on to someone else (perhaps Vegreville MLA Derek Fox?), Ray stayed on for another 4 years, leading us to 0 seats and 8% of the vote in 1993.  The party found itself stuck with a leadership race anyway, but with no elected MLAs to seek the job.

Given the fact that the Alberta NDs spent most of the last year around 20% in the polls and given the weakness of the Liberals, the result in this spring's provincial election was a disappointment.  The popular vote did not grow, and the additional 2 seats won were largely due to more beneficial vote splits.  It was certainly not an astounding result.  

I see very little indication of Alberta catching Mason-mania in the next four years.  Most of the progressives and enviros I know in the province are more than a bit ambivalent about his leadership.  It is instructive to note that this was not the first time that Brian Mason succeeded in doubling our seat count: in 2004, the Party succeeded under Mason in winning 4 seats, only to have the caucus re-halved in 2008.

The Party is fortunate to have other potential leaders in David Eggen and Deron Bilous (I'm not sure if Notley wants it right now); better to rejuvenate the Party under fresh leadership now, than risk not having that option in 4 years.