Braid: Nenshi gets a UCP welcome like Stalin might have faced

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Naheed Nenshi entered the Alberta legislature Tuesday, accompanied by Josef Stalin.

Not literally, mind you. But they were condemned in almost the same breath.

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“It would make Josef Stalin blush, how much this NDP wants to go down the road of communism in our province,” said Jason Nixon, minister of seniors, community and social services.

Stalin was the brutal leader of the Soviet Union from 1924-52.

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Nixon blasted the NDP’s Bill 205, which aims to cap rent increases at the rate of inflation, to a maximum of five per cent.

But his prime target was former Calgary mayor Nenshi.

“I guess the fact is that even when Nenshi gets here and changes their colour to purple and changes their name, we’re still going to see a socialist party across from us,” Nixon went on.

Direct attacks. High drama. Exactly what the former mayor wants.

Nenshi’s candidacy is all about being seen as the only one who can beat Premier Danielle Smith.

The more freaked out the UCP sounds about him, the better this could work.

Nenshi is Alberta’s leading political performer. Drama flows whenever he opens his mouth.

And in today’s politics, drama is far more powerful than pleas for calm and reason.

Nenshi seeded the UCP eruption, quite intentionally, by calling the government “immoral and dangerous.”

He says Smith is no longer the “perfectly interesting person” he knew 30 years ago at U of C, when campus clubs all shared the same office and the students mingled across party lines.

Nenshi was president of the debating society. Smith headed the Progressive Conservative club. Ezra Levant hung out there, too.

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Alberta’s political cauldron was already starting to bubble.

Nixon’s counterattack was canny. He stirred up worries with traditional New Democrats that Nenshi is not a party enthusiast and wants to change everything, including the colour and the name.

There is party agitation to divorce from the federal NDP. Six candidates in last year’s election (all losers) demanded a split.

This is divisive and emotional in the traditional party, as Nixon surely knows. But it’s a small change in the larger battle that’s coming.

The 2022 UCP leadership race won by Smith was in some ways startlingly similar to today’s NDP contest.

It was powered and won by high drama from the outsider who made her cluster of establishment opponents look weak and undefined.

Smith, who wasn’t yet elected, ran against six “insider” candidates, all UCP ministers and caucus members.

They generally called for calm, sensible, capable government. With the exception of Todd Loewen, they rejected Smith’s call for a Sovereignty Act.

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The UCP insiders believed that after the dangerous party split that brought former premier Jason Kenney’s fall, members yearned for normalcy.

Nobody gave Smith the slightest chance. But she stuck to her tough talk and anti-Ottawa plan. The Sovereignty Act sucked the air out of the other campaigns.

The final vote was close, but Smith won.

In today’s NDP, Nenshi is the outsider running against five party veterans.

They include four MLAs and Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan, whose job installs him as far inside the party as a New Democrat can get without being elected.

Nenshi doesn’t have a policy with the emotional impact of the Sovereignty Act; not yet, anyway.

But he has Smith herself.

For many New Democrats, no motivator is stronger than defeating this premier and finding a leader who can do it.

All the candidates routinely attack the premier and the UCP. They welcome Nenshi to the race, but their smiles look frozen.

They could end up like those UCP strivers for leadership, jumbled together in the public mind while the outsider stands out vividly.

In 2010, Nenshi came out of nowhere to beat two well-known candidates in his first mayoral race.

Now the curtain rises again. Will he have another long run?

That’s unclear, but it will be one dramatic show.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald

X: @DonBraid

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