NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi won his seat in Edmonton-Strathcona in one of three provincial by-elections this week.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
When Naheed Nenshi assumed the leadership of the Alberta NDP a year ago, optimism abounded.
There had been concern among New Democrats that they would never get anyone to fill the shoes of outgoing leader Rachel Notley – the first NDP premier in Alberta’s history and the charismatic head of the party for a decade. When Mr. Nenshi, the former three-term mayor of Calgary, decided to seek Ms. Notley’s job, most progressives in the province were thrilled. He was a big name to take on Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party.
To say it hasn’t exactly gone according to script would be an understatement. For many, the overriding question underlining his inaugural year on the job has been: Where’s Naheed?
Alberta NDP Leader Nenshi wins seat in one of three by-elections
He was front-and-centre on Monday after handily winning the by-election called to fill Ms. Notley’s Edmonton-Strathcona seat. Premier Danielle Smith delayed calling the vote for as long as she could (six months under provincial statute) – just to show how small-minded her government can be.
Now the truly hard part begins for the provincial NDP Leader. He has a popularity deficit to rectify that won’t be easy to reverse. Some good fortune will almost surely be needed too. In late May, polling from Janet Brown Opinion Research showed just how big a hole the NDP has dug for itself. The poll of 1,200 Albertans conducted for the CBC showed the UCP with 52 per cent support of those surveyed, compared to 38 per cent for the NDP, which is six points less than the vote share they received in the 2023 election. In Calgary, the NDP trail the UCP by 13 percentage points, while in Edmonton, a city the NDP won by 29 points in 2023, it’s almost a draw. That’s bad.
Mr. Nenshi’s challenge is multifaceted. His time as a politician has mostly been spent as a mayor, where he controlled the media agenda to a large degree. Now he doesn’t – Ms. Smith and her government do. Which means Mr. Nenshi is going to have to work doubly hard to get noticed – to try and drive his agenda, whatever that is.
That’s something else he’s going to communicate in big, bold letters soon: What is the Alberta NDP now? What is their big grand vision for the province that is so much better than what the UCP is offering?
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For Mr. Nenshi, trying to share the stage with Ms. Smith will be a challenge. If she has demonstrated anything during her time as Premier, it’s that she’s not afraid of work. It would be difficult to name a provincial premier who pursues their aims as tirelessly and relentlessly as she does. If the woman has ever turned down a media interview request I’d like to know about it. She seems to be on national television every day.
While you may quarrel with the basis for many of her arguments, you can’t deny Ms. Smith gives the impression that she is fighting for her province against that big bad bully known as Ottawa. Albertans admire that about her.
Mr. Nenshi is not dumb and can surely see the same thing. So how does he combat it?
He can’t win by trying to cast the NDP as the complete opposite of the UCP – a left-wing version of the province’s right-wing government. Alberta is largely a conservative-to-centrist province. Mr. Nenshi has to craft the image of a party prepared to govern from the middle, with some room on the left for individuals the UCP have turned their backs on, and some room on the right for a business community perennially suspicious of the NDP’s intentions.
Alberta is not immune from the affordability issues affecting people across the country. And if that isn’t an NDP issue, I don’t know what is. You can, concurrently, lobby for a pipeline while offering hope to people who are struggling to get by – people you don’t hear the UCP talk much about.
Mr. Nenshi will now have access to a platform he’s so far been without – the legislature. It will resume in October, and he will be in Question Period to grill Ms. Smith. (That, in itself, is an art form he is going to have to learn to master. Ms. Notley was brilliant at it.) There, he will have daily access to the media.
The NDP Leader has time on his side. The next election is not scheduled for a couple of years. A lot can happen in the interim. There is more than enough time for Mr. Nenshi to reverse his party’s slump. But it’s going to take an enormous amount of work.
If Naheed Nenshi wants to be the second NDP premier in Alberta’s history, people can’t be wondering where he’s hiding. He’ll have to be everywhere, every day.