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Saturday, April 09, 2005

gossip from the alberta pc convention

Check out Daveberta's thoughts on the First-Ballot of the Alberta PC leadership race...

(Make sure to check out the updated list of MLA endorsements in the Alberta PC leadership race.)

Well, I promised it, and here it is - some gossip from my ‘source-on-the-floor' of the Alberta PC Convention at Northlands in Edmonton this weekend.

Apparently, other than the disturbingly large amount of delegates wearing 'Lyle Oberg for Leader' buttons, the Tories made some interesting decisions related to their 'youth' wing.

In order to address the lack of youth involvement in their party, Alberta PC delegates came up with a truly Alberta Tory solution. They have voted to change the definition of 'youth' from 14-25 to 14-35. So, that means, if you were a 35 year old Regular PC member yesterday - today you are now a member of the Progressive Conservative Youth Association...

Oh oh! but it gets even more bizarre - under the new category, 'youth' members who are +26 are not voting members of the 'youth' association even though they are technically members.... does this seem really weird to anyone else?

And just when you thought there couldn’t be anymore juice!!

The big 'renewal initiative' that the Tories undertook after being slapped around in the last election recommended that they hire a staff member to support the youth-wing with organizing, etc. Well, apparently the President of the PC 'youth' association got up to the mike and spoke vehemently against this motion - to the chagrin of the 'youth' membership which he supposedly represents... the motion was defeated...

Wow, these guys are better than pay-per view TV!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

why wudda 30 year old want to hang out with a group of 14 year old political geeks??? What a stupid idea.

CFAC Library said...

thrills! chills! spills!

What better can we expect from Ralph and le gang?

Only The Glorious Leader can bring us to Nirvana!

daveberta said...

I know!

But seriously, it's a pretty novel idea, eh? Instead of changing or putting more resources into their youth recruitment strategy, they're taking existing members and reclassifying them as youth!

Sounds like a 'Lyle Oberg' idea to me...

Robert McBean. said...

there probably afraid that the 12 year old will out think them.

Anonymous said...

what a dumb idea. duh!~

Jason Hickman said...

"...after being slapped around in the last election ..."

Man, only in Alberta does winning what, 2/3 of the seats equate to getting "slapped around".

If you're supporting the idea of the AB Tories getting "slapped around", and you consider the last election mission accomplished - boy, talk about setting your standards low!

daveberta said...

Hi Jason,

You're totally right - "only in Alberta does winning...2/3 of the seats equate to getting slapped around" and you'd absolutely think so after the Tories put up such a huff about losing those 12 seats and 200,000 votes. They're acting as if they owned them.

I think this is generally what happens when a party has been in power for 34 years. They feel they have a divine right to rule. Not too different than how the Federal Liberals have acted.

The 2004 election was a mission accomplished for no one. The reason why it was such a big deal is because it was the first time in Ralph Klein's 25 year political career that lost ground on anything. Plus the fact that the tories lost most of the seats to the Alberta Liberals. :)

Cheers.

D :)