All about that base: Why UCP leadership contenders probably aren't speaking to you

Most Albertans can be forgiven if they don't feel spoken to in a United Conservative leadership race that's centred largely around bitter memories of COVID restrictions, Alberta sovereignty and other Ottawa-centric provocations.

That's because campaigns aren't speaking to most Albertans. And that's by design.

Party sources tell CBC there are around 123,000 UCP members who enlisted before the recent cutoff date to get a leadership ballot. That's roughly double the number who held UCP memberships for May's review vote on Jason Kenney's leadership.

While party organizers are encouraged by the number, it still means that a mere 3.5 per cent of eligible Albertans (everyone aged 14 and up can join UCP), will effectively determine who becomes premier until next May's general election.

This isn't to allege anything nefarious or anti-democratic — this is the Canadian political and parliamentary system, in which the duly-chosen governing party gets to replace its leader in a manner of its choosing, either by caucus or by membership. 

It's happened before provincially, when successors were chosen for premiers Alison Redford and Ralph Klein, and federally, after Jean Chretien and Brian Mulroney stepped aside before an election. It's going on right now next door in British Columbia, where New Democrats will choose who's in charge next when Premier John Horgan departs in December.

But it's worth underlining that Danielle Smith, Travis Toews, Brian Jean and the other candidates aren't campaigning for the attention and votes of Albertans. They're trying to persuade a subset of a subset — the United Conservative supporters (UCP netted one million votes in 2019's election) who are keen enough to pay $10 for party memberships.

It's especially relevant when this conversation seems so detached from the broader conversation that Albertans are having. 

The UCP leadership race's most hot-button issues, judging by both the social-media output of the campaigns and the sort of debate questions they've fielded, are overwhelmingly tied to provincial anger towards Ottawa. Next on the list seems to be resentment of past COVID measures, and pledges to never go into "lockdown" again. 

But when pollster Janet Brown surveyed Albertans in June, their top-of-mind issues were affordability and inflation, economy, and health care. Down in the margins of public priorities were federal relations, equalization, the pandemic.

Dive deeper into the poll data, and it's only likely UCP voters — along with supporters of the farther-right Wildrose Independence Party — who prioritize these issues.

Some UCP leadership contenders, like Jean, Toews and Rebecca Schulz, led off their campaigns focusing on some of the more broadly-relevant issues. But as Danielle Smith captured fire with her constitutionally dubious Alberta Sovereignty Act and no-matter-what pledges about future COVID restrictions, others chased her down those same avenues. 

Consider Rajan Sawhney, campaigning as a "moderate" conservative. She's not made federal issues a priority, and has lambasted Smith's sovereignist bill, but this week she came out with a policy release with the old hard-right battle cry "More Alberta, Less Ottawa," and her own pledge to "fight for Alberta's autonomy."

This is also why most leadership hopefuls, even the more federalist among them, initially committed to joining next week's forum co-hosted by Alberta Prosperity Project, a group barnstorming the province to promote outright independence from Canada. (Toews and Schulz pulled out after CBC inquired about their attendance.)