upcoming Wildrose Alliance events

With less than a week to go to the Glenmore by-election, AM 660 is claiming that "there is talk of a surprise result". I'm not so sure. In Canadian politics, one can rarely go wrong by betting on the least interesting result, and that's probably even more true in Alberta. That said, I agree with Metro that signs on private property play some predictive role. This would be especially true in bedroom communities, since homeowners there are more likely to have actively solicited a sign than private property owners on major drags, where campaigns typically lobby owners to accept their signs.

[Metro's] search uncovered the following sign totals:

Paul Hinman, Wildrose Alliance — 152

Dianne Colley-Urquhart, Progressive Conservative — 128

Dr. Avalon Roberts, Alberta Liberal — 106

While this might just mean that Wildrose supporters are the most enthusiastic (this is where a rule that allowed every voter willing to climb 10 flights of stairs a second vote would come in handy) it is worth something that "Matthew Benzen of the Wildrose Alliance said their campaign has re-ordered signs three times because of the demand." Presumably this demand is not coming from people who decided they want 2nd and 3rd signs on the same property.

I would welcome a Liberal win in the riding as a milestone on the road to a Wildrose Alliance government in this province. The fact of the matter is that in the process of supplanting the ancien régime with a new government both smart and of having solid fiscally conservative cred (the Liberals being doubtful on the latter of these two qualities and the ancien régime itself being short on both) there is going to be a period of time when the P"C"s and the WAP both attract significant shares of the vote such that third parties "run up the middle" for a win. It would be in the mutual interest of those on the non-Liberal side of the spectrum to minimize this time period by taking prompt and due note of which party "splitting the [non-Liberal] vote" is on its way up and which one is one its way down and accelerating that process. And although the Wildrose Alliance is most "deserving" of an additional seat in the Leg in terms of representation of the electorate, the Liberals are more deserving than the P"C" Party such that a Liberal takeaway from the oversized government caucus would be an incremental improvement in terms of democratic fairness.

I was last living in the heart of the Glenmore riding in June and July (just southeast of the Oakridge Co-op on Southland Dr and 24 st) so it is unfortunate that I headed up to Edmonton just in time to miss the action.

There are nonetheless some events of political interest in the north this coming week. Acccording to the Grande Prairie Herald-Tribune, "[t]he Wildrose Alliance leadership campaign kicks into high gear" tonight with a debate at the Grande Prairie Inn. The Peace Country is a very important region for the party. The next debate will be on Thursday here in Edmonton: 7:30pm at the Four Points Sheraton, 7230 Argyll Road. The candidates then move to Calgary for a September 16 debate, to Lethbridge on Sept 17 and in Red Deer Sept 23.