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Resignation in part to avoid nasty election campaign

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach — pilloried as a hayseed lightweight and wounded by personal poll numbers that threaten his party’s 40-year dynasty — says he has answered the bell for a quarter century, but now it tolls for him.
Alta Premier Resigns 20110125
Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach leaves the Legislature

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach — pilloried as a hayseed lightweight and wounded by personal poll numbers that threaten his party’s 40-year dynasty — says he has answered the bell for a quarter century, but now it tolls for him.

“After 25 years of public service, I am not prepared to serve another full term as premier,” Stelmach told a news conference Tuesday.

It was a surprise announcement that delivered a tectonic jolt to Alberta’s political landscape just as it enters an election cycle for a vote Stelmach had previously pledged would come in March 2012. By law the date could now be pushed out as far as March 2013.

Stelmach said he will submit his resignation papers soon, triggering a leadership race to replace him.

He fingered the Tories’ main political rival on the right, the Wildrose Alliance, as one of the reasons he is going. He expected operatives to come at him this year with attack ads and gutter politics.

“There is a profound danger that the next election campaign will focus on personality and U.S.-style, negative-attack politics that (would be) directed at me personally,” he said.

“The danger is that it could allow for an extreme-right party to disguise itself as a moderate party by focusing on personality — on me.”

The Wildrose Alliance, a right-of-centre party composed mainly of disillusioned Tories who broke away under Stelmach’s administration, has been matching the Tories in polls for over a year.

Under telegenic Calgary business leader Danielle Smith, the Wildrose has tagged Stelmach’s team as faux-Conservatives, reckless spenders running multibillion-dollar deficits with no plan or vision to fix critical issues like health care wait times.

Stelmach’s remark was surprising, given that the Wildrose in the last legislature session focused on its own policy alternatives, particularly on health care.

There were partisan political shots across the aisle in that session, but even Stelmach acknowledged in December it went both ways.

“I guess some of that (rancour) is on us,” he said at the time.

Smith said Tuesday she was puzzled by Stelmach’s remarks.

“I’m not sure exactly what he’s referring to,” she said. “We have stayed completely focused on the issues and we intend to continue staying focused on the issues.”

Political scientist Duanne Bratt said Stelmach will be remembered as a man who didn’t catch a break.

“A lot of it was bad timing. He was the accidental premier, a compromise candidate, who came in after a charismatic leader just as a recession was hitting and the price of oil and gas dropped,” said Bratt, with Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“But having said that, some of his wounds were self-inflicted.”

Stelmach, 59, is a man of the soil, a farmer from east of Edmonton who served former premier Ralph Klein as a cabinet minister under three portfolios before winning the vote to replace him in 2006.

At that time, Alberta had enjoyed years of multibillion-dollar surpluses along with a soaring population that topped the three-million mark.

Klein had wiped out Alberta’s $23-billion debt, but his administration was viewed in 2006 as rudderless.

Stelmach was seen as a longshot to replace Klein but used a strong organization to get out the vote and come up the middle between heavyweights Jim Dinning and Ted Morton.

As leader his gift was personal magnetism, a down-home Everyman who won converts one handshake at a time and never forgot a favour.

Rob Anderson, a former Tory backbencher who was one of three party members to cross the floor to join the Wildrose, said the premier was not served well by his inner circle.

“Ed’s biggest downfall was also his greatest quality — he is a fiercely loyal person. But in my view he was loyal to the wrong people — bureaucrats and individuals I don’t think have the province’s best interests at heart,” said Anderson.

The recession that hammered the global economy soon after Stelmach took over left him in a tough spot. Oil and gas revenues dried up but there were people to care for, including hundreds of thousands of newcomers from the boom years who were tired of their children schooled in portable classrooms and didn’t want to wait hours on end for emergency medical care.

Anderson didn’t agree with Stelmach’s decision to continue spending during the recession, which has led to recent multibillion-dollar budget deficits, but said he objected more to the fact he didn’t get a say.

Caucus meetings under Stelmach, he said, were orchestrated pep rallies, with senior officials and ministers making decisions in private and then presenting them to backbenchers as faits accompli.

“It was completely undemocratic, in every possible way,” he said.

There were gaffes: the Tories restructured the oil royalty program to take in more money, but when the Calgary-based oil companies complained loudly, they reversed course.

Even the about-face didn’t buy the party much love in the southern city. Newspaper cartoonists routinely depict Stelmach as “Special Ed” — a rube with overalls and straw between his teeth.

There was more indecision to go with flat-out bad politics.

The Tories launched a liquor tax, then pulled it back.

Stelmach and the cabinet gave themselves double-digit pay raises. When the public complained, they pulled some back.

But it was later learned they hadn’t cut their pay hikes, only some of their bonus money, meaning Stelmach may stand alone as the only politician ever to cut his take-home pay and still get lambasted as a double-dealing sneak.

He was lashed by critics for a wooden speaking style, his answers often rambling into side issues and anecdotes — all commas, no periods or exclamation marks.

There were triumphs: Stelmach won a massive majority in the 2008 campaign, but it was a campaign that set a record for low voter turnout and engendered criticism that the province resembled a banana republic for allowing Tory party organizers to run the polling stations.

As his public opinion numbers dwindled, he received 77 per cent support at his internal party leadership review. But then he faced accusations that organizers had twisted arms.

Anderson said Stelmach’s low personal poll numbers were the final nails in the coffin.

“He was pushed out, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

“Mostly it came from rural MLAs and Calgary MLAs, saying, ’Ed, we can’t win with you anymore.”’