Ed Stelmach became Alberta’s premier four years ago because many Conservative party members thought he was a second-best choice.
He’s leaving soon because so many Albertans now share that view.
Polls indicate that his Conservative party is tied with the upstart Wildrose Alliance Party, which has only four MLAs in the legislature to the Tories’ 67, and a leader, Danielle Smith, who sits in the gallery.
Even worse for a farmer/premier, the Wildrose is ahead of Stelmach’s Tories in rural Alberta.
Recent polls suggest that only one in five Albertans think Stelmach is doing a good job.
The more immediate problem for Stelmach is that too many people in his party, his caucus and his cabinet agree.
Chief among them is Ted Morton, who lost to Stelmach in the 2006 Conservative leadership race, along with Jim Dinning, because Stelmach was the second choice of more voters in a preferential runoff ballot.
Morton, who resigned on Thursday as finance minister, one day after suggesting to reporters that he had neither the need nor desire to step down, is a devout fiscal conservative.
It’s a matter of personal shame that he crafted a budget with the biggest deficit in Alberta history, expected to hit $5 billion by the end of this fiscal year.
Until this week, Morton was tasked with delivering a new budget this spring, and had planned one that balanced spending and revenues.
Doing so, with natural gas prices tanking and no prospect of a quick turnaround, would mean big government spending cuts.
Political insiders reported earlier this week that Stelmach overruled his finance minister, ordering another year of deficit spending.
He shocked his caucus and politicos before Christmas by announcing that Alberta would not deliver a balanced budget until 2013.
Scant weeks before that, Finance Minister Morton met the editorial board of The Globe and Mail and promised a balanced budget in the coming year.
This week, political insiders say, Morton threatened to quit, prompting Stelmach’s sudden announcement on Tuesday that he was “not prepared to serve another full term as premier.”
Having promised an election in 2012, one year before his mandate would legally expire, Stelmach cited the prospect of a rancorous American-style election campaign from a rabid right-wing party as a prime reason for deciding not to complete his mandate or seek re-election.
Stelmach became Alberta’s 13th premier in December 2006, toppling front-runners Dinning and Morton in a second-ballot preferential-vote election, where most of his rivals’ supporters judged him a lesser evil.
He will go down in history as a lesser premier, but certainly not evil.
Stelmach was, and remains, a fundamentally decent man.
He was a hard-working farmer who got involved in municipal politics with a genuine desire to serve the public.
He rose through the ranks, won the respect of colleagues and constituents and entered provincial politics and cabinet.
Hard work and decency, however, are not enough to become an effective premier.
Premier Stelmach never looked or sounded like a confident leader capable of rallying Albertans around a coherent vision.
He is a terrible public speaker. The fact that English was not his first language, no doubt, it a big part of that, but in today’s media-saturated environment, it’s a fatal flaw.
Stelmach also damaged his administration by not bringing the best and brightest advisers and MLAs into his inner circle.
His first cabinet was overweighted with second-tier MLAs who had supported his leadership campaign early, while superior talent waited outside.
In Central Alberta, for example, Mary Anne Jablonski, was initially overlooked.
Calgary was woefully underrepresented, and Stelmach had the bad fortune to introduce a long-overdue new petroleum royalty regime when global oil prices fell to $40 a barrel from $140 in 2008.
Stelmach moved to correct these defects.
He can leave office with his head held high if he finishes by putting the interests of his constituents ahead of his political party.
The coming budget will tell that tale.
Stelmach has acted on his promise to close Alberta’s infrastructure deficit, which was created in the boom years when our population grew explosively and roads, bridges, schools and hospitals were not built or renovated to accommodate it.
Stelmach rightly noted that now is the time to do it, while workers are available, when interest rates are at their lowest point in a generation, when construction costs are well off their peak.
Building now is the right thing for Albertans.
Crafting a balanced budget in fear of the Wildrose Alliance should not be the overriding imperative.
Joe McLaughlin is the retired managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.