The Dawn of a New Age this is not

Wildrose Alliance party leader, Paul Hinman’s victory in a byelection last week could be the sign of a new era in Alberta provincial politics. The Calgary-Glendale seat is the far right Wildrose Alliance’s first ever, and has pundits speculating that the party is gaining in popularity.
When you think about places that have been under the constant rule of a single party for several decades, images of totalitarian dictators in far off developing nations come to mind. It may surprise some to know that, as of 2009, the Alberta Progressive Conservative party has been governing for an uninterrupted 38 years. In that time, the province has only elected four different premiers. Highlighted by the 14 year reign of (King) Ralph Klein – famous for, among other things, being a high school dropout with a very public drinking problem.
In the 2008 provincial election, the Progressive Conservatives took 72 out of a possible 83 seats, leaving just nine Liberals and only two members from the NDP. This is why Hinman’s Sept. 14 victory over Conservative candidate Diane Colley-Urquhart sent shock waves through Alberta politics.
The Wildrose Alliance is the product of a 2008 merger between the Alberta Alliance Party and the Wildrose Party of Alberta. Hinman was named interim leader a month later. Both parties came from staunch conservative backgrounds; the Wildrose Alliance is a continuation of that tradition. It debuted in the 2008 provincial election on a platform that promised bottom line taxes, the rule of free market economics, demonized Ottawa’s hand in provincial affairs, and made a frightening promise to strike section three of Alberta’s Human Rights, Citizenship, and Multiculturalism Act – which bans hate-speech.
Hinman lost his former seat in the Legislative Assembly that election.
Since taking 6.8 per cent of the popular vote in their first election, placing them in between the NDP and the Green Party, the Alliance took a page from the federal Conservative playbook and began attacking Premier Ed Stelmach, labeling his PCs the ‘Pick and Choose’ party. During the recent byelection, the party’s motto was “send Ed a message.”
Pundits across Canada, including Tim Woolstencroft of the Strategic Counsel polling firm, are calling the Wildrose Alliance a “real threat” to the Tories and are predicting a shift further to the right in Alberta.
There are some statistics they seem to be overlooking. Hinman took the race with 37 per cent of the vote. Avalon Roberts, the candidate referred to in the Globe and Mail as simply “a Liberal,” lost by 276 votes, or 34 per cent. That works out to 92 votes, per percentage point in a race where a mere 40.5 per cent of eligible voters actually made it out to the polls.
Though Hinman’s election may be sending shivers of excitement up the backs of the far right and chills down the spine of environmentalists and the political left, it is far from the game changing event the media has played it up to be. The fact that the Liberals and Wildrose are taking away from the Conservative stranglehold on the province, may reveal cracks in Stelmach’s foundation, it is hardly a wedge that will shatter it.
In a province that boasts NDP environment critic Linda Duncan as the sole non-Conservative Member of Parliament, and where the Oilers went from eighth place to the Stanley Cup finals in 2006, underdog stories are nothing new and they don’t necessarily mean the dawn of a new age. After all, the Oilers finished twelfth in the Western Conference in 2007.