UCP launches attacks ads at Nenshi. Nenshi laughs it off and shoots back.

It's going to be a punchy Alberta politics summer

Thank you for reading this week’s Daveberta newsletter. If you like what you read today, feel free to share it with a friend or colleague.

Summer is here and I am going to take a short break from writing about Alberta politics for the next week or two to enjoy the beautiful weather and (so far) wildfire smoke-free days. I’ll be back in mid-July and I am looking forward to sharing some new Alberta politics columns and some fun Alberta political history articles that I’ve written.

Happy Canada Day!

Dave

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Politics in Alberta doesn’t skip a beat.

Less than a week after former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi won a landslide victory in the Alberta NDP leadership race, the United Conservative Party has launched a series of attack ads against him, framing the new NDP leader as “Justin Trudeau’s choice for Alberta” and “just another tax and spend Liberal.”

The UCP’s quick move to try to define Nenshi is smart and shouldn’t come as a surprise. Anyone who watches politics closely will know that if you start a campaign like this early that identifies an opponent’s weakness and repeats the message over and over again, then people who aren’t normally political will start repeating the message too.

Trying to tie Nenshi to Trudeau is probably the most predictable move available to the UCP. The Liberal Prime Minister is deeply unpopular in Alberta (and, now, in parts of Toronto) and it echos the actions of other provincial Conservative parties in Canada. It’s also something that the UCP did effectively to former NDP leader Rachel Notley by framing her as one half of the “Notley-Trudeau alliance.”

But because Nenshi is already a well-known figure in Alberta from his time as Mayor of Calgary from 2010 to 2021, it will be interesting to see if this UCP attack sticks.

When I first sat down to write this column I was going to argue that Nenshi’s team should be quick to fight back to avoid getting stuck in the UCP’s message framing, and, well, that’s what they did.

Nenshi’s team tossed out the old NDP playbook.

Instead of stumbling over fancy words and getting overly defensive (or even worse, ignoring the charge), Nenshi laughed off the attack and shot back with his own stinging criticism of Smith’s UCP.

nenshi

A post shared by @nenshi

“They are nothing if not predictable. I said for a long time that Danielle Smith and the UCP government only know how to do two things,” Nenshi said in a video posted on social media. “They know how to pick fights and they know how to waste money.”

“I am proud of what we built together. When I was Mayor of Calgary for 11 years we were consistently named one of the best cities in the world in which to live, and I would put up my public record and my record of service against Danielle Smith every day of the week, and twice on Sundays,” Nenshi said.

“Bring it on.”

Nenshi’s critics have accused him of sometimes being prickly and thin-skinned, but you wouldn’t know it after watching this video. Fighting attacks from your opponents with humour can be really effective when done properly. And maybe it’s because we’re on the verge of Stampede season, but Nenshi’s response definitely makes it sound like there’s a new sheriff in town.

It’s still early days, but if this exchange shows us anything, it’s that Albertans can expect provincial politics to get a lot punchier this summer and in the three long years before the next provincial election.

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Some advice from Daveberta to Nenshi’s NDP

I’m not planning for this to become a regular feature in the Daveberta newsletter, but if I could offer three small pieces of advice to the Nenshi and his new team, here’s where I might start:

1. The Alberta NDP need to stop relying on earned news media and organic social media posts to get their message out. They need to buy ads and focus on digital advertising. Judging by the large amount of digital ads that Nenshi’s campaign purchased during the NDP leadership race, I think they already know this, but it’s worth repeating.