Why Dinning and Morton Lost the PC Leadership

Ed Stelmach’s win of the Alberta PC Leadership last December was a surprise to many but not to his hard working campaigners, especially given their success between the first and second ballot. Yes there was the emerging ABD and ADM factor (Anybody but Dinning and/or Morton) that will draw some to conclude Stelmach was a “compromise” candidate, but there was something else going on too.

The vote on the next PC Leader would also be the Premier of Alberta so the selection process was open to any adult Albertan who wanted to pony up 5 bucks and take the trouble to show up and vote. There were lots of people who were not typical Progressive Conservative party types but they did join the PC Party and they showed up and I think they made a big difference in the final outcome.

I had access to some particular insight as to what Albertans wanted in their next Premier. My firm, Cambridge Strategies Inc. with a strategic partner, did a Discrete Choice Modelling survey in the summer of 2003 where we asked Albertans to tell us what qualities they were looking for in the next Premier of Alberta. Given that it was done a while ago I think those findings still reflected, in large part, why Jim Dinning and Ted Morton lost and why Ed Stelmach won the PC leadership on December 2, 2006.

We surveyed influential Albertans, those who are involved in thier communities and whose opinions matter to other people, as to their preferences in three major leadership categories, Preparation for Premier, Vision and Education. We broke Preparation to be Premier in four experience areas, political, business, academic and legal experience. As for vision we asked if the next Premier should focus strictly on Alberta's needs, Alberta’s Role in Canada or Alberta’s Role in the World. The level of education preferred for the next Premier was between High School, University Degree and Post-Graduate levels.

We also asked about some personal qualities, communications skills and approaches to change citizens valued in their next Premier. The results showed the values of Albertans, including both positive and negative attributes, that would influence and drive their preferences in selecting their next Premier. It also indicated the degree of intensity Albertans held on each attribute.

I will share in my next posting my analysis of why Ed won, but first I will discuss what we discovered to be the least optimal leadership characteristics for the next Premier. I think this analysis of the study results around negative attributes, what Albertans did not want in their next Premier, provides some real insight as to why Dinning and Morton lost.

If your Experience in preparation for leadership was mostly political (Dinning) or academic (Dr. Morton) there was a significantly negative voter influence on you and your candidacy. If your Vision was focused exclusively on Alberta, like Dr. Morton who signed the famous Firewall letter, along with now Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The Firewall letter urged Premier Klein to isolate Alberta from the rest of Canada by erecting a policy “Firewall” around the province. That was the second significant negative attribute on the Dr. Morton candidacy and campaign.

If your perceived personal qualities were Assertive and Self-confident (Morton) or Informed and Curious (Dinning) it was a turn off to voters. The world is a complex place and Integrity, Honesty, Real Life Experience and practical Know-How were the preferred personal leadership qualities Albertans were looking for in their next Premier. If your Communications approach was that of a media savvy political spinner (both the Dinning and Morton campaigns) it was a major turn off. Being perceived as slick and glib was a curse to any candidacy for Leader/Premier.

If your approach to dealing with change was to follow the lead of others; that was the most negative turn off in the entire study. I think Dinning may have gotten caught in this negative attribute because many saw his leadership as an extension of the status quo Calgary dominated continuation of the Klein agenda. Morton, a Reform Party activist, Senator-in-Waiting was perceived to be strongly tied to the agenda of the Reform wing of the federal Conservative Party. He was perhaps seen as someone who would be more inclined to follow the Harper Conservative agenda and isolate Alberta from the rest of Canada.

Voter perceptions of a candidate having to kowtow to those backroom people who “brung you to the dance” and who those people were would have had an influence on deciding if a candidate was “their own man or not.” Morton stating early on that he would not be disclosing any information about his campaign contributors made people wonder who he was going to be beholden to and if such unknown forces may have too much influence that would not be in the best interests of Albertans. The Dinning campaign was seen as having lots of the Klein era holdovers from the plethora of MLA endorsements to long time Klein political organizers in key campaign roles. That could have contributed to a suspicion about Dinning’s practical capacity to be an independent leader and an agent of real change or would he be just a continuation of the same old – same old.

This is admittedly all 20/20 hindsight but it is interesting to consider nonetheless, especially as we go into the next provincial election expected in the spring of 2008. Next posting I will discuss the survey results and how they indicated how Stelmach presented a winning combination of experience, qualities and capacities.

Dick Cheney '94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire

What made Cheney change his mind from this analysis of invading Iraq in his 1994 interview?

9/11 is part of it but why did he and others mislead and lie about it - not just to justify an invasion surely.

What Albertan's Want The Next Election To Be About - Part 2.

My post yesterday dealt with the relative importance of the top and bottom issues in our conjoint study on 15 key policy issues done in the fall of 2006 during the Alberta PC Leadership campaign. We noted the management of environmental issues around water, land and air quality was the #1 issue on the minds of Albertans who participated in the study.

Environment has been #1 before but historically gets bumped when election time happens and other issues take control of the political agenda. That is not likely to be the case in the next Alberta election, presuming it is held in the spring of 2008. This because of how dominant the management of the environment is to the value concerns of Albertans now and for the future.

The posting identified the low end issues too but here are some results from the middle of the field. They were issues that were getting lots of news coverage but they were not the dominant concerns on the minds of influential Albertans last fall. They included creating a diversified value added economy (7th), maintaining public infrastructure like schools and roads (8th), addressing labour and skills shortages (9th), safe communities (10th) and quality and access to post-secondary education in at 11th place.

All of these are important issues but the ranking and intensity of the concern of Albertans means they are not most important issues for government to deal immediately with if they want to have a policy and political that satisfies the concerns of the majority of citizens.

Next we asked about how Albertans felt their government was performing in each issue area. The overall average performance rating of all issues was only 28.60 percent. Nothing to write home about but not unexpected given that government had been drifting for about 7 years up to that time.

The best performance by government at 51% was in the area of having safe communities, the 10th ranked issue. This is not too surprising since we only asked influentials who are very connected and involved in their communities and would naturally feel safe in them. A statistically random survey that did not focus on engaged citizens and opinion leaders may show different results.

As for the most important issues, like the environment, the performance rating was only 18%. Lots of room for improvement there! Health ranked at #2 performance ranking was well above average at 38%, not bad at all. Reducing poverty the 3rd most important issue saw a performance rating of only 16%. Lots of work to do there! Managing growth was the 5th ranked priority and only had a performance rating of 12%. That is some of the low hanging fruit for Ed Stelmach and one of his five key principles.

In fact Premier Stelmach’ Five Priorities fit very well with the concerns of Albertans that we identified. Why then is he having trouble connecting with Albertans? It is not his policy agenda or his political capacity. It is summed up in 2 words, communications and execution. That is where improvements have to be made and time is a-wastin.’

What Albertan's Want The Next Election To Be About.

What will it take to reassure Albertan’ that their government policy agenda is on the right track and focused on what is important? That is the big question facing the Stelmach government and anyone who looks to replace it come the spring of 2008 and a much anticipated provincial election.

I did a conjoint study on 15 key issues on the minds of some 350 influential Albertans last fall during the PC leadership. By influential, I mean people who are involved in their communities and whose opinions matter to other people. We did not just involve the rich, famous and powerful and we did not just reach out to Tories.

The findings are fascinating. We knew at the end of September, long before the traditional pollsters and mainstream media, that managing the environment issues of water, land and air quality had replaced health care as the #1 issue on the minds of Albertans. Not only was environmental management the most important factor it was well over twice as important as health care quality and access. Equally as fascinating was the need to reduce poverty coming in at #3, topping concerns over education quality, which was in fourth place. Managing growth and providing open and transparent government rounded out the top 6 issues.

The remaining 9 issues were of little importance, relatively speaking, with managing oil and gas royalties (12th) lowering taxes (13th) dealing with resource revenue surpluses (14th). The least important issue on the minds of Albertans was resolving problems facing Aboriginal Albertans.

This study shows the environmental and social agendas facing Alberta today are trumping the economic issues. These top six issues are the key drivers determining what is important to Albertans, and while it represented only 40% of the issues we studied it accounted for 70% of the overall relative importance ranking of concerns on the minds of Albertans.

So Premier Stelmach, there you have it. If you are seen by Albertans as the authoritative, authentic, informed and knowledgeable leader on those six issues you can expect to win with a landslide.

Later in the week I will do another posting on this research and show how Albertans thought their government was actually performing in each issue area. More fascinating results to come.

Are the Feds Ignoring the Mountain Pine Beetle Impact in Alberta?

The Harper government is big into Mountain Pine Beetle spending in BC but seriously lagging in doing anything about the Alberta infestation. The recent conference on the impact of MPB infestation in Grande Prairie pointed out the damages is already done to the forests in BC and the real need for help there is to assist communities and industry to adapt to the post-beetle reality. I will post on these MPB conference comments from the Grande Prairie conference in the near future once the video tapes of the speeches are on DVD and I have them in hand.

If we do not stop it in Alberta, the experts are suggesting it then spreads and reaches out across the boreal forest throughout the entire country. That is devastation that has impacts beyond forest industry and communities, important as those are, but also in the negative effect on the balance of the planet’s entire ecosystem.

The Alberta Forest Products Association has already complained about the political nature of BC pre-election spending by the Harper government on railway upgrades in the name of MPB action.

I have been working with Glenn Taylor, Mayor of Hinton and the Chair of the Grande Alberta Economic Region, (GAER) on some strategic approaches to help the west central Alberta communities adapt to the reality of MPB on their communities. They are very proactive and we have done a video on Policy Channel explaining what the MPB infestation means and what needs to be done. Local governments need the feds and the province to step up and damn quickly if we are to do anythings effective in dealing with the infestation impacts.

No doubt the BC industry and affected communities need help but the Fed response is reactionary at best. The also need to get proactive in Alberta and start putting some of their efforts and funds in here too. Albertans are Canadians too.