2024 Alberta NDP leadership election

[Njall]

As anticipated, Notley announced her intention to step down today. She will stay on until a new leader is selected and will continue to serve as Leader of the Official Opposition in the Legislature during the spring session.

The general consensus in the media and amongst pundits are that there are three early front-runners (none of whom have formally declared, although Ganley recently posted a video that many took as a soft-launch):

• Kathleen Ganley: MLA for Calgary-Mountain View since 2019 (she represented Calgary-Buffalo from 2015-2019 but moved seats in 2019). She served as Justice Minister during the 2015-2019 NDP government and currently serves as the Opposition Critic for Energy & Climate (Oil & Gas, Hydrogen and Minerals). Before she was elected, she worked as a labour, employment and human rights lawyer.
• Sarah Hoffman: MLA for Edmonton-Glenora since 2015. She served as Deputy Premier and Health Minister during the 2015-2019 NDP government, and currently serves as the Deputy Leader of the Alberta NDP and Opposition Critic for Municipal Affairs (Calgary & Edmonton). Between 2010-2015, she was an Edmonton Public School Board Trustee (and served as Chair from 2012-2015). I believe she also spent some time working as an NDP caucus staffer prior to 2010.
• Rakhi Pancholi: MLA for Edmonton-Whitemud since 2019. She was one of only three rookie NDP MLAs elected when they lost government in 2019. She currently serves as the Opposition Critic for Education, and was relatively prominent as the Early Learning & Child Care critic between 2019-2023. Before she was elected, she worked as a lawyer for the Alberta government, and before that worked in private practice with a focus on education, labour and employment law.

[Njall]

In actual leadership race news, Edmonton-Whitemud MLA Rakhi Pancholi officially entered the race today with this (in my opinion) pretty well-done announcement video.

[Njall]

In actual leadership race news, Edmonton-Whitemud MLA Rakhi Pancholi officially entered the race today with this (in my opinion) pretty well-done announcement video.

So two of the three frontrunner that were identified have announced as official candidates; Ganley and Pancholi, Calgary vs Edmonton (lol). AND rumours of Nenshi. Do we think Hoffman will join the race? any other names bubbling up?
Do we have a sense of the positions, policies, leanings of Ganley and Pancholi?

These are the other names listed as potential candidates on Wiki
1.Deron Bilous, MLA for Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview (2012-2023), former Minister of Economic Development[16]
2.Joe Ceci, MLA for Calgary-Buffalo (2015-present), former Minister of Finance[16]
3.Court Ellingson, MLA for Calgary-Foothills (2023-present)[17]
4.Todd Hirsch, director of Energy Transition Centre at Innovate Calgary (2023-present), chief economist at ATB Financial (2007-2022)[17]
5.Sarah Hoffman, MLA for Edmonton-Glenora (2015-present), former Deputy Premier and Minister of Health[6][2]
6.Janis Irwin, MLA for Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood (2019-present)[16]
7.Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour (2005-present)[17]
8.Naheed Nenshi, former Mayor of Calgary (2010-2021)[6][18]
9.David Shepherd, MLA for Edmonton-Centre (2015-2019) and Edmonton-City Centre (2019-present)[6][2][17]
10.Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse, MLA for Edmonton-Rutherford (2023-present)[19]

I believe most expect that Janis Irwin will endorse Sarah Hoffman. Janis Irwin was a senior advisor to Rachel Notley from 2015-2019 while Sarah Hoffman was Deputy Premier.

I’d actually be surprised if Irwin endorsed anyone other than Pancholi. They’re best friends in the NDP caucus - they literally call each other their “work wives” (or something to that effect).

From that list, aside from Hoffman, I think Shepherd would be the most likely to enter the race, followed by Calahoo Stonehouse, McGowan, and/or Nenshi. I’d be surprised if any of the others ran.

Also, interesting observation in browsing the Wikipedia article: I notice that Ganley has been endorsed by both Raj Pannu and Brian Mason, the two party leaders who preceded Notley.

[Njall]

Sarah Hoffman officially entered the race today. She appears to have endorsements from three MLAs so far: Nathan Ip (Edmonton-South West), Lori Sigurdson (Edmonton-Riverview), and Peggy Wright (Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview). Sigurdson and Wright are both unsurprising as they're longtime NDP stalwarts. I had expected that Ip would be more aligned with Pancholi, but he did serve on the Edmonton Public School Board with Hoffman so they could have a pre-existing friendship from then.

[Njall]

Irwin is officially out (not surprisingly).

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Pancholi endorses defederating from the Federal NDP (albeit without using those specific words).

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Edmonton-Rutherford MLA Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse appears set to enter the race tomorrow.

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Nenshi is expected to enter the race next Tuesday (March 11th).

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His video is interesting. Uses orange and his personal brand of purple interchangeably. It also had a Tommy Douglas quote.

I think he will win quite easily. Will be interesting to see what happens with the caucus, none of whom support him (yet).

Actually, at least one MLA supports him. Court Ellingson from Calgary is his campaign co-chair...also another Calgary MLA Kamir Kayande has endorsed him too

Samir Kayande. Very smart person. He was appointed the associate finance critic right after being elected. He was mentioned as a possible candidate himself.

Looks like Nenshi's also gotten endorsements from Calgary-Falconridge MLA Parmeet Singh Boparai and Edmonton-Ellersie MLA Rod Loyola. The endorsement from Boparai isn't very surprising (he's actually Nenshi's MLA). The Loyola endorsement is something I wasn't expecting though, given his history. For those who don't remember, Loyola was the Gil McGowan-esque labour candidate in the 2014 leadership election (when he was President of the non-academic staff union at the University of Alberta). It's also decently well-known in the Edmonton political scene that he's historically had Communist Party and/or Marxist-Leninist Party ties in his pre-MLA days. For instance, I found this archived page from the Marxist-Leninist Party's website from 2013 that has him listed as the organizer of an Edmonton vigil for Hugo Chavez (at the bottom of the page).

[Njall]

Edmonton-Whitemud MLA Rakhi Pancholi is dropping out of the race and throwing her support behind Nenshi. According to Globe reporter Emma Graney, this followed the first update to leadership candidates on membership numbers since Nenshi entered the race, which showed that party membership had doubled in a single week.

[Njall]

That may be a bit easier, as Alberta should get a new electoral map before next election.

I'm not sure about that - the current map is very new and was passed just before the 2019 election.

They get a new map every 2 elections. Elections Alberta says there should be a new redistribution commission appointed as early as this year.

With that said, Alberta's current redistricting law makes the processes susceptible to partisan gerrymandering if a government is so inclined. The law allows for deviations up to the constitutional maximum of +/- 25% from the quotient for all ridings.* Additionally, the panel is made up of two appointees of the Premier, two of the leader of the opposition, and one (the chair) of the Speaker, which effectively gives the governing party a 3-2 majority on the panel. This majority has been used relatively subtly in the past few redistributions, but the UCP could use it this time around to preserve the current urban/rural split, or if they were really ballsy, even take ridings away from Calgary and Edmonton.





*The law allows for up to four districts with up to -50% if the districts meet certain criteria - there are only two in this category right now and both are in the far north, but there was a push last time to get Drumheller-Stettler in the depopulating rural southeast included as a special consideration district

[Njall]

Not exactly a surprise, but the three MLAs who were backing Pancholi have all moved their endorsements to Nenshi. Nenshi now has the support of 9 sitting MLAs, compared to 8 for Ganley, 4 for Hoffman, and 2 for Calahoo Stonehouse.