Brian Jean's byelection win sets the stage for showdown with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney

[Spazito]

The melodrama that is Alberta politics has just become a street brawl.

And newly elected MLA Brian Jean is bringing his brass knuckles – along with almost five-years worth of anger and resentment.

For Jean, winning the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche byelection Tuesday night was not a means in itself but a means to an end. Namely, ending the career of Premier Jason Kenney.

It is a bizarre twist in an already twisted political landscape where Alberta's premier, once the darling of Conservatives across Canada, has been the most disliked provincial leader in the country for much of the past two years.

And now we have a UCP candidate who handily won a byelection on a campaign promise to overthrow the leader of the UCP.

more

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/brian-jean-s-byelection-win-sets-the-stage-for-showdown-with-alberta-premier-jason-kenney-1.6386455


I figured he would win but was hoping against hope that there would be enough of a split among the right wing voters that the NDP might slip up the middle but no such luck.

[Bev54]

1. I just about choked on my tea, reading that Kenny was the darling of conservatives

across Canada. He has always been an asshole. Brian Jean is certainly better but he is still a conservative.

[Spazito]

2. I agree, I've never read before that Kenney was ever considered...

the 'darling' of the conservatives. I despise Kenney but am almost hoping he wins the leadership review as his approval numbers with Albertans are in the toilet and the NDP's numbers are in possible win territory whereas if Jean becomes leader he is seen as more moderate and would more likely pull the cons together for a win.

[Bev54]

3. I agree with you Jean will win if he wins leadership, I am a liberal but for the first

time in my life I voted NDP in the last provincial election and will again. I am BC born and raised and remember the disaster made by the NDP years ago.

[Spazito]

4. I, too, am Liberal but, unfortunately....

the Liberal party is practically non-existent in Alberta so I support the NDP here.

I also lived in BC when the NDP took power under Clark and it was an unmitigated disaster in every way. After that mess, my only choice on the left in my riding was NDP, Green or not vote, given the Liberal party was taken over by a conglomeration of former conservative parties, so I voted Green the last vote I cast there before moving to Alberta.