Beware the Ides of March… Everybody beware the Ides of March!
Independent MLA Raj Sherman picked the Ides of March to announce he’ll run for the leadership of Alberta’s Liberal party as soon as the Legislature’s only other physician, outgoing Liberal Leader David Swann, steps down.
The faltering Liberals will get two or three days of whiz-bang publicity out of Sherman’s decision, then they’ll have the opportunity to think about the welcome mat they (and all the other opposition parties) laid out for the Legislature’s most over-the-top health care gadfly and repent at leisure.
Meanwhile, also yesterday, all around the province journalists and their ilk were receiving emails from Gary Mar, the well-connected Ralph Klein-era Tory cabinet minister and just-resigned Alberta “envoy” to Washington, D.C., inviting them to the announcement today of … well, something … at a hotel on Edmonton’s trendy Whyte Avenue.
That something, of course, will be the official launch of the Calgary-born Mar’s campaign to capture the leadership of the also-faltering but considerably mightier Alberta Progressive Conservative Party when Premier Ed Stelmach, his hour come round at last, slouches back northeast of town to farm.
Now, I’m not saying Sherman won’t end up winning the leadership, the election and becoming premier of Alberta. Anything’s possible in the topsy-turvy world of this province’s politics. But if that does happen, it’ll be a miracle of biblical proportions, and the end of a chaotic election trail littered with bumps, fallen trees, twists, potholes and letters banning him from the halls of Edmonton hospitals if he’s not there to seek treatment.
And I’m not saying Mar won’t end up losing the leadership race or the election and not becoming premier, but if that happens it won’t be because he lacks a smoothly running election campaign machine run by professionals who know what they’re doing. (Even the Love Machine, former Ralph Klein confidante Rod Love, is reported to be on Mar’s side, which answers one important question!)
In other words, Sherman is liable to say almost anything; Mar is not.
Sherman makes serious allegations one day, fails to back them up the next, gets saved by a CBC expose the day after that, and compares the government to the Gestapo and gives everyone a shocker of a letter the moment he’s recovered his credibility. It would be fair to say that Sherman’s mouth is known to motor, but at the same time he remains popular with a dedicated corps of fans, proving he has more political lives than the proverbial cat.
In a blog post yesterday, Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason expressed disappointment at Sherman’s decision. It’s said here that a more appropriate emotion might have been relief. That’s one loose cannon that won’t be rolling around the tiny fo’c’sle of the good ship New Democrat.
Mason rightly observed, however, that Sherman “believes that only he can save health care in Alberta … we respectfully disagree. …”
On the other hand, Mar is almost certain to run a disciplined and careful campaign, watch his political Ps and Qs and never say anything to upset his longstanding and carefully nurtured ambition to be Alberta’s premier.
Arguably, everything that Mar has done from the day he starred in a television ad for Pontiac automobiles, to his mostly trouble-free performance in numerous cabinet portfolios, to his years of assiduous fund-raising, to his efforts to soft sell the tarsands to American officialdom in Washington, to suave resignation from that position Monday has been designed to bring him to this point.
Well, maybe not the now-forgotten Pontiac ad, but everything else.
Never forget, of course, that these two men are not the only candidates in the race for the leadership of either the Liberal Opposition of the governing Conservatives. This important fact is sure to keep the Alberta political scene entertaining for weeks to come.
This post also appears on david Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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