Nenshi’s Dangerously Nothing NDP Leadership

On The Alberta NDP’s Crisis

“Managerial competence is attractive to the voters in a crisis, but the next election will not be a referendum on the past, but a choice between two futures, and it’s the case that the NDP have not publicly shown any interest in the choice they’ll offer to the people.”

Those words were first written on my site in November of 2021, when Rachel Notley’s NDP were riding high in the polls and I couldn’t stop myself from being deeply unimpressed by the job they’d done at setting their general election position. Then I quoted them in my 2023 election post-mortem, where I was proven entirely correct about the state of the play with the Alberta NDP. And now it’s 2025, there’s a new NDP leader, and the only thing different is Nenshi isn’t even getting the boost of being seen as competent.

From before Nenshi even officially stepped in the ring, friend of the site Sarah Biggs wrote a scathing piece about how Nenshi was what the UCP wanted, writing “if Alberta’s NDP hopes to expand its appeal beyond its base, choosing a leader who could be easily caricatured by his opponents is a risky move. There’s a real question of Nenshi’s ability to build a voter coalition to get to 44 seats.” Looking at this polling, it’s entirely vindicated.

My case against Nenshi from last spring seems worth a read as well. “Nenshi has been very obviously running for this job since he endorsed Notley, but he’s put nothing on the bone except set himself up as a lightning rod for the right. He may “speak truth” about Danielle Smith but the problem is you need to pick a leader who will make people who voted UCP last time not vote for them this time, not a leader who makes my mentions happy. It’s about wanting to win the province as it exists, not the province he wants to exist.” That was written on March 11th, 2024 - 15 months later, there’s still no meat on that bone.

Nenshi is a candidate with high name recognition and bad approvals. He’s not a candidate you’d expect to poll badly but grow as the province gets to know him more. He is a known quantity and he’s 13% underwater and at 40% giving him low marks. This is a five alarm fire for the NDP and for believers in progressive values.

Take something as both serious and unserious as hockey - before last night’s Oilers game, Nenshi posted a video of himself willingly in a Connor McDavid Oilers jersey. Not a Team Canada McDavid, which actually could have straddled the line between appreciation of McDavid’s talent and honesty, but a full ass Oilers McDavid jersey. Naheed Nenshi was the Mayor of Calgary for 11 years.

If nobody in his orbit understands the problem with this, they should all be fired.

We live in an era where politics and culture is about authenticity and realness. We now demand authenticity and politics from our pop stars and our athletes, and we want connection with our politicians. When Carney skated with the Oilers in March it was a significant moment to show him as a real person, something more than a stuffy Ivory Tower bore with a rod up his ass. We elect leaders, not platforms, and voters take their cues on the people they’re potentially electing in many forms. Is it dumb to think that someone will look at a former Mayor of Calgary wearing an Oilers jersey in the run up to trying to win a seat in Edmonton as proof Nenshi will say or do anything to win? Maybe, but it’s what people will think - and I’ll honestly be hard pressed to say that they’re wrong.

Nenshi is the available progressive option in Alberta, for good or for ill. He is not, as of right now, meeting the moment. Danielle Smith is focused on culture war fights and independence pandering and Nenshi is unable or unwilling to break through those fights. He’s come out vehemently against popular-but-bigoted trans politics, which while morally correct is electorally suspect, and his people generally complain about various announcements of Smith’s, but Nenshi has yet to give anybody a sense of what a Nenshi NDP looks like - either how it is different to the Notley party or how it is going to bring the province together.

We don’t know what Nenshi would do on climate change and energy policy. A 2024 speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce included criticisms of the Trudeau Feds but no answers to any serious questions. I don’t know what parts of the 2023 platform he’s still committed to, I don’t know what his plan for transit in his city is now that the UCP has gutted the Green Line (a move he criticized), I don’t know his views on the province’s sweetheart deal with Murray Edwards and Flames ownership, and nobody else does.

More importantly, I don’t know why Nenshi came back into public life. I’m not saying that he’s a narcissistic egomaniac who needs external validation - though Lord knows how many of his old Council colleagues would say that about him - but he comes off like he’s in it for himself because he doesn’t give us another narrative through his actions. He is asking for the province to, essentially, trust him that he’s got their best interests at heart. The problem is, the province doesn’t care.

In this context, things like the Oilers jersey are important. It’s not as important as the various Smith government scandals, but when you’re facing an uphill battle I don’t think it’s great to signal that something as fundamental as Flames vs. Oilers is something you’re willing to compromise on.

The NDP have to earn the votes of the people in a way the UCP doesn’t. The UCP is the default for a majority, and to even have a hope of victory you need to actively make the case for why you deserve their votes. The NDP aren’t right now. They’re doing a decent job of saying the UCP are bad, and they are - they’re dangerously unfocused on the issues that matter and incompetent even when they do try and fix anything - but that doesn’t matter. Being right is insufficient in a democracy, you have to be seen to be right. At this point, he’s not being seen at all.

My interest here is not a victory lap about how I was right. Nenshi is the leader and he will remain so, so any progressive should want Nenshi to succeed. I do, fervently. My hope is that this week’s numbers light the fire under Nenshi’s ass that Notley and her people never felt, even after thousands of column inches from me and Max Fawcett and even more words said privately to them from others. There is a reason that the group of Conservative staffers who like me most are Alberta Conservatives, because plenty of them knew and said so at the time and after that they were glad Notley never listened. I hope the texts I get in 2027 aren’t glee that Nenshi similarly failed.

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