Jason Markusoff: Should the Alberta UCP leader prevail, it's now fair to wonder where his ruthless impulse to crush will take him as premier
Jason Kenney chose a complex, winding road toward the Alberta premier’s seat. It wouldn’t be enough, he reckoned, to defeat Rachel Notley’s unpopular NDP government by taking over one of Alberta’s right-of-centre parties—he had to smush them together.
So what’s the first thing he does with his new party? The first bloody thing, to inaugurate this fresh democratic movement? His team coordinates a sham candidate to run alongside him in the leadership, whose main purpose is to say all the snarky things about Brian Jean, Kenney’s chief rival, that Kenney’s leadership braintrust thought not genteel enough to come from their man’s mouth.
There’s also a live RCMP investigation surrounding allegedly fake donors to Callaway, whose contest entry fee was bankrolled with one individual’s $60,000 payment, as colleague Jen Gerson reports for Maclean’s. This treachery reveals Kenney’s ruthlessly competitive streak, a keenness to pulverize competition at all costs. He had grown used to lopsided victories: he often prevailed in his suburban Calgary riding with 70-per-cent majorities; early in 2017, he seized the PC leadership with 75 per cent. Kenney would crush again, brooking no room for error or murmurs about a narrow, modest victory.
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