Establishment vs 'Take Back' insurgent: UCP's civil war spills into Alberta's election

You have to go all the way back to 1982 and a couple of disgruntled former Social Credit MLAs to find anybody who ran as an independent candidate and won in an Alberta election. Reach back farther to 1967, and a Cochrane rancher named Clarence Copithorne, for a case of a never-elected outsider who won as an independent candidate.

In the decades since, dozens have tried and failed — often spectacularly — to beat established parties without a partisan banner of their own.

So why would it be any different when former county reeve Tim Hoven runs as an independent against former UCP finance minister Jason Nixon in the rural riding of Rimbey–Rocky Mountain House–Sundre? Other than the fact Hoven, like Copithorne, raises beef cattle?

Welcome to the grudge match at the bleeding edge of intra-party rivalry in the UCP — the Jason Kenney establishment versus the Danielle Smith-loving insurgents.

It also stands to become the purest test of whether the conservative pressure group Take Back Alberta actually has mainstream appeal, or if their skills only lie in gaining leverage within UCP club politics.

Nixing Nixon

Last spring, Hoven tried taking on Nixon in the UCP nomination for his west-central Alberta riding. But the party disqualified the former Clearwater County reeve, reportedly due to social media activity and allegations Hoven disparaged the RCMP at last year's Coutts blockade.

To an already bubbling stew of rural conservative rage over Kenney's COVID public health rules, add in the perceived shutdown of a challenger to a key member of Kenney's inner circle. It fuelled the Take Back Alberta campaign to fight to turf Kenney as UCP leader, and Hoven was  a key regional organizer for that movement.

Kenney was indeed turfed.

Then when Smith was crowned leader, the taker-backers hoped she'd give Hoven another shot, as she'd often signalled she would during her leadership bid. Smith has shown no favour toward Nixon, excluding him from a cabinet that's otherwise thick with Kenney's front-benchers.

But when it came to reopening his nomination, Smith and her party executive ultimately demurred — other MLAs in her caucus, it turns out, don't take kindly to the idea of tossing their job security in safe rural ridings back to the wolves in the party base.

That decision remained intact even when Take Back Alberta's internal vote-getting efforts last fall helped stack the UCP's provincial board with the group's preferred activists, and again in January when hundreds of central Albertans elected a largely pro-Hoven slate to the constituency board for Nixon's riding.

The central party has stuck with Nixon and held fast to Hoven's disqualification, no matter how much the local UCP machinery protested.

Six weeks before the provincial campaign formally kicks off, Hoven and the taker-backers finally abandoned his bid to internally topple Nixon, and announced they will try to do so at the general election ballot box on May 29. "The members in this constituency have not had the chance to vote for a conservative candidate who isn't Jason Nixon," Hoven said. "They want to make sure their voices are heard."

He still professes his support for Smith and the UCP. If he wins, Hoven would be happy to join the UCP caucus. His signs will be Conservative blue.

UCPers against the UCP

Sheane Meikle will serve as the independent candidate's campaign manager, even though he sits on Rimbey's UCP board. (He says he'll take leave during the campaign, and return to the UCP board afterwards — though party brass may have other thoughts, after he electioneers against the UCP.)

It's unclear how many others on the local riding board will bail on the UCP, or stay put and sit on their thumbs. They technically could deny Nixon's campaign the money in the constituency association's bank account — records show it was a healthy $60,000 last year — but the central campaign could kick money Nixon's way and sanction the local organizers for defying their own candidate.

The risk of vote-splitting and the opposition coming up the middle is nearly non-existent. The NDP scored nine per cent of the riding's vote in 2019, and until this year has never run a candidate who actually lives in the riding. Nixon won with 82 per cent — or Hoven's camp will say the UCP did, not Nixon.

The former minister isn't signalling any concern. Smith is popular in Nixon's riding, and he will run as her party's candidate.

In an interview, he pointed to a long trail of candidates who were barred from seeking party nominations who tried running as independents and lost badly, including a former MLA against Nixon himself in 2019. 

Nixon reasoned that most constituents are devout UCP supporters and are paying little attention to the nomination dust-storms.

"The NDP will be in second in my riding by a country mile," Nixon told CBC News.

"Any division, even in safe constituencies… doesn't help the overall party, and that's why we need to preach a message of unity."

Take that

Where UCP nomination battles have gone ahead since Smith became leader, Take Back Alberta has had several successes — even with their preferred candidate in Calgary–Lougheed, Jason Kenney's former riding.

Not all of them have been particularly active with the group, certainly not like Hoven is. If those candidates win in May, it will be hard to gauge how much success is owed to the UCP or Smith, or how much to taker-backers.

But in the Rimbey riding, Hoven will be unmistakably known as an anti-Kenney, pro-Smith, TBA candidate. If he wins without the UCP brand, he will be, to many believers, that group's lead delegate on the inside.

Though let's not get ahead of ourselves. Even Meikle concedes it will be a challenge for outsider Hoven to beat the UCP candidate. Even if the rancher professes he's the real pro-Smith choice, and that he wants to wrest power from the province's establishment conservatives, history isn't on his side.