Take Back Alberta bringing Jordan Peterson and Tea Party politics to Alberta

9 more days until Election Day. Yee Haw, as they say.

If election campaigns are political marathons then we are entering the homestretch.

The parties have laid out their plans, the leaders have debated and the final week will focus on pushing that sliver of undecided one way or another. The parties will be ramping up their ground game, getting their supporters out to the advance voting polls and preparing for Election Day on May 29.

If the party war rooms still have any bombshells or scandals they want to expose, this next week is the time to do it.

A controversial right-wing media personality with a huge online following will soon be entering the election fray.

Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson is making three speaking tour stops in Alberta next week and will almost certainly provide fodder for local conservative media columnists to chew on.

Jordan Peterson, 14, in the Edmonton Journal on March 14, 1977 (source: Paul Fairie on Twitter)

Peterson has a personal connection to this campaign too.

He grew up in in the northern town of Fairview at the same time as NDP leader Rachel Notley, whose father Grant Notley was the local MLA. And, according to an Edmonton Journal report from 1977, Peterson first became interested in politics when talking to junior high school librarian Sandy Notley (Rachel's mother and Grant's wife). He even came within 13 votes of being elected an NDP vice-president when he was 14 years old.

"What a fantastic entry into politics. I think he will go far," said Grant Notley of Peterson’s candidacy. Grant Notley was leader of the Alberta NDP at the time.

But today, Peterson’s tight embrace of deeply divisive and destructive American culture war politics plants him miles away from the direction Rachel Notley is trying to point her increasingly-centrist NDP.