Friday, July 25, 2008

The Big Mo

The ALP leadership race has it's second candidate, former Edmonton McClung MLA Mo Elsalhy. From Mo's facebook page:


Hi all. Join me as I make it official. On Friday, July 25th, at 12:30 at the front steps of the Legislature, I will confirm my intention to challenge for the leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party.

Media will be there but we are planning the whole event to take no longer than 30-45 minutes at most. If you can come and would like to show your support, it would be great.

Thanks.

Mo

The 37 year old Elsalhy, while certainly a long-shot candidate, should bring a lot of energy to the campaign, and will hopefully be able to draw young people into the party.

Being the first Edmonton candidate to declare, I can understand why he's chosen the legislature for his launch but if I were running his campaign, I'd be playing up the youth angle and would paint him as a candidate who breaks the conventional political mould. With that in mind, I'm thinking something like a YouTube campaign launch would have worked better than the traditional one he'll deliver later today.

Mo's leadership webpage, abbreviated as M.E.L.L. for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend, can be found here.

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7 Comments:

  • Can anyone offer any hint as to the Liberal leadership procedure?

    Would a "Tories for a day for Blakeman" effort be enough to decide a leader, for instance?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:54 p.m.  

  • M.E.L.L. = Mo Elsalhy Liberal Leader

    Still though, not the brightest idea.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:36 p.m.  

  • tjk - It'll probably take about 2000 votes to win the leadership...maybe 3000.

    Given that, yeah, it'd be pretty easy for the Tories to stack it, although I believe the party doesn't allow you to buy a membership if you hold one in another party (that's kind of hard to verify though).

    By Blogger calgarygrit, at 6:29 p.m.  

  • Tories might be willing to vote for a candidate, if anyone could make a convincing case that any of the leadership hopefuls were at all likely to pose a threat to them. I mean really - does anyone think Laurie, Mo or even Dave Taylor are going to be able to organize the kind of campaign that will take down a 37 year dynasty?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:52 p.m.  

  • A candidate like Blakeman winning would ensure more conservative victories - Blakeman is very much the "same old Liberal" kind of thing. It would be wise for conservatives to vote her in!

    That is, if they actually cared about the liberal party or the leadership. Which I don't think they do. I don't think anyone, except a select handful, will either.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:16 p.m.  

  • The ALP leadership will be a one member, one vote affair. Tories could stack it, if they wanted to.

    You never know how that might work though: during the PC leadership, the joke in ALP circles was that we should all buy memberships and vote for Ed Stelmach, the worst of the candidates.

    We all know how that movie ends.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:29 a.m.  

  • I believe the party doesn't allow you to buy a membership if you hold one in another party (that's kind of hard to verify though).

    I think you can replace "kind of hard" with "impossible", since there's no way the PCs would share their membership lists with another party for them to check.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 9:55 p.m.  

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