Premier Alison Redford speaks at the first annual Alberta Economic Summit on Feb. 9, 2013 in Calgary.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail
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For Alberta Premier Alison Redford, it's been one campaign after another.
She won her party's leadership in a race that took up nearly all of 2011. Months later, she called last year's general election, one in which she overtook the Wildrose Party in the final week to secure a majority victory. Now another vote is approaching: her leadership review. And it could be a race, pitting Ms. Redford against herself.
The constitution of the Progressive Conservative party demands that the second annual meeting after an election include a review – basically, a question of whether party members still support the leader. That means this fall.
Typically, it's routine. Former premier Ralph Klein regularly scored above 90 per cent. That was until 2006, when he scored 55 per cent and was shown the door. His successor Ed Stelmach – Ms. Redford's predecessor – scored 77 per cent in 2009, only to bow to internal party pressure 14 months later and resign.
Mr. Klein once set the bar at 70 per cent, saying any lower and a premier should resign. In a December interview with The Globe and Mail, Ms. Redford refused to set her own benchmark. "I haven't given it any thought at all," she said at the time.
But she's now under the pressure of falling oil revenues that have led her to take on debt and back off election promises. Recent polls have shown support for her party, and for her personally, dropping.
So is she already campaigning?
Her campaign strategist, Stephen Carter, is widely rumoured by political sources to be drumming up support among party faithful for the premier ahead of this fall's review. Mr. Carter, though, says it isn't true. He says he's busy as a "volunteer" on the Liberal leadership campaign of Martha Hall Findlay, while also advising Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi on his re-election campaign.
"No, I'm not, I don't know what I'd do with the [Redford] leadership review," said Mr. Carter, who ran Ms. Redford's leadership bid and advised her during the general election. "Everything's up in the air. I don't know anything about where she is in the leadership."
The Premier's office said Friday that Mr. Carter, now a strategist for Hill and Knowlton Strategies, isn't working for the premier's office or the provincial Public Affairs Bureau. A PC party spokesperson added, in an e-mail, that Mr. Carter is not working for the party "in any capacity at this time."
The PC spring election campaign was managed by Susan Elliott, who one source said is also drumming up support for Ms. Redford ahead of the fall review. That effort is meant to "make her seem approachable to party members" for whom the "premier's office door is open," one source said.
Ms. Elliott says she's undoubtedly talking up the premier ahead of the leadership review, expected in November, but isn't doing so in a formal role, and isn't being paid.
"I'm 100 per cent behind the leader, and I will do anything I can to get others to share that view," Ms. Elliott said, saying it's not surprising the premier's backers would be trying to drum up the backing of party members. "I think you should expect the premiers and her supporters to do that," she said.
Ms. Redford isn't an entirely natural fit as party leader. Many long-time stalwarts supported her rival, Gary Mar, in the leadership race, and Ms. Redford has quite candidly made it her mission to draw new supporters into the party – she had just one caucus supporter before the leadership's first ballot. It has all left some long-time Tories saying she's freezing people out.
"There's been a lot of chatter about her, and her control over caucus and for that matter her control over cabinet," said Duane Bratt, chair of the Department of Policy Studies at Calgary's Mount Royal University.
Mr. Stelmach's score of 77 per cent included "some evidence of arm-twisting that had been done out of the premier's office," Prof. Bratt said. If Ms. Redford were to do the same leading up to the fall vote, she'd be taking a play out of her predecessor's playbook. But Prof. Bratt warned: "A lot can happen between now and then."
Josh Wingrove is The Globe's Alberta legislative reporter in Edmonton.