Raj Sherman's famous (or infamous) campaign truck. Credit: Raj Sherman / Twitter Credit: Raj Sherman / Twitter

Just like the proverbial bad penny, Raj Sherman always turns up.

Now he’s turned up as the United Conservative Party (UCP)’s candidate in Edmonton-Whitemud, whether the UCP likes it or not. 

It can only have been pure ineptitude on the part of the UCP’s strategic brain trust to allow Sherman to beat two other candidates, one of them a party staffer seemingly recruited to ensure he didn’t get the job, to win the nomination in the southwest Edmonton riding. 

Now Sherman will have another chance to use his Liberal-red Dodge Ram pickup truck adorned with his face, a pumpjack and Edmonton’s skyline on one side, and the same face, some farm equipment and a Calgary skyline on the other.

The truck, a weird counterpoint to former premier Jason Kenney’s Tory blue Dodge Ram pickup, got the colourful wrap for Sherman’s planned bid to seek the leadership of the UCP last spring when the former premier resigned after his party leadership review vote went south. 

The UCP, prudently, said no thank you to Dr. Sherman, diplomatically telling the former Alberta Liberal Party leader and Progressive Conservative junior minister that he didn’t quite meet their technical requirements to seek the party’s top job, which thanks to the UCP’s majority in the Legislature came with the keys to the Premier’s Office.

This seems like a case of a party that disparages red tape being saved by the stuff.

For the Edmonton-Whitemud nomination vote though, Sherman made sure he obeyed all the party’s rules, was allowed to take part in the race, and now that he’s won it fair and square, there’s not much the UCP can do about him except pray discreetly for an NDP win in the riding. 

Fortunately for all concerned, that shouldn’t be a problem. The NDP’s Edmonton-Whitemud MLA Rakhi Pancholi, would be extremely difficult to dislodge. She is popular, capable, articulate, and a good fit with the prevailing progressive mood in the city of Edmonton. 

One should never say never, though. Anything can happen in politics. But Pancholi’s re-election is probably about as close to assured as you can get in Alberta politics. In the event of a NDP victory in the general election, she is likely to be invited to join Leader Rachel Notley’s cabinet.

Sherman, who is by all accounts a highly competent Emergency Room physician and a decent human being, is nevertheless a menace to any political party associated with him.

Readers not familiar with Sherman’s record may think this is unfair, or even cruel, to say. Alas, I am deadly serious. His political career exemplifies the journalistic cliche “a trail of devastation” one of which he has left in his wake. 

Elected in 2008 in the riding of Edmonton-Meadowlark, Sherman at first appeared to have a promising career in the Progressive Conservative Party. Well-spoken and respected for his medical work, he was named by Premier Ed Stelmach as Parliamentary Secretary to the minister of health and wellness, Ron Liepert.

But within two years, Sherman was starting to show the erratic tendency that would be the hallmark of his political life.

In 2010, he gave premier Stelmach little choice but to fire him after he penned a rambling, sometimes incoherent email attacking his own party’s failure to reduce Emergency Room wait times and mailed it to, well, almost everyone.

Given the boot by Stelmach, Sherman followed up with a media interview attacking Alberta Health Services Board chair Ken Hughes and Liepert, who is nowadays a low-profile Conservative MP in Ottawa. 

In 2011, Sherman took a notion to run for the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party, whose leader David Swann wanted to retire.

The Liberals had two good candidates for the job, capable MLAs Laurie Blakeman and Hugh Macdonald. However, the party had foolishly decided to allow anybody to vote for their new leader, including non-members.

So on September 10, 2011, thanks to that brainstorm, Sherman won the Liberal leadership on the first ballot and became leader of the Opposition.

Sherman was a disaster in that role, partly because he believed he had all the answers – especially when it came to the problems of health care. For a spell, he managed to persuade quite a few Albertans that was so. It didn’t last.

At one point Sherman tried to change the party’s name to the Liberalberta Party. That didn’t work out either, for reasons that are probably obvious. 

In the 2012 provincial election, Alison Redford’s PCs formed the government with 61 seats. The Liberals – not long before a credible opposition party – managed to win only five seats with Dr. Sherman at the helm. Still, that surprise kept the party’s heart pumping for another three years.

Meanwhile, however, The Wildrose Party led by Danielle Smith, who is now the UCP premier, managed to win 17 seats, enough to become Official Opposition. The NDP won four.

Sherman soon earned a reputation as a party leader who made startling revelations and strident claims about the conduct of the government and the health care system, then couldn’t back them up.

He didn’t seem all that interested in leading the party, either, which was described at the time as a group of independents who shared office space.

Sherman’s performance in the 2013 preferential health care inquiry was underwhelming, to say the least. 

His accusations, which contributed to the inquiry being called, amounted to very little, with retired Judge John Z. Vertes concluding there were only a few minor incidents of patients receiving preferential access to care.

In January 2015, not long before the election that brought the NDP to power, Sherman decided to pull the plug on the Liberals, quitting as leader and saying he wouldn’t run again as an MLA.

On May 5, 2015, the NDP won a majority government in a general election. The Liberals elected only one MLA, an outcome for which Sherman certainly deserves much of the credit. Swann, the only Liberal still standing, was pressed back into service as interim leader.

In the 2019 election, Swann didn’t seek re-election and the Liberals failed to elect a single MLA.

It’s safe to predict that in the May 29 election, at least in Edmonton-Whitemud, a lot of former Alberta Liberals will be working hard to ensure Pancholi is re-elected. 

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...