Big Week on the Campaign Trail!

Well, the past week or so had several interesting highlights. The theme, if there indeed was one, is the emergence of Ted Morton and Lyle Oberg as real players in this race. Jim Dinning had a pretty solid lead, but watch out for the Alberta grass roots (particularly in Morton's case); I am becoming more convinced that Morton and Oberg are stronger than Dinning in this very critical area. We shall see.

The biggest news had to be the official endorsement of Ted Morton by the Alberta Alliance's leader, Paul Hinman, followed by a bit of a backtrack when Alliance brass stated that the endorsement would stay unofficial and no official letter of endorsement to party members would in fact be sent. All that said, how Morton can not benefit from this official-unofficial endorsement from a rather significant Conservative voting block is hard to comprehend.

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=b1ffce25-2074-4fad-beeb-567d68847ac5&k=71776

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2006/10/18/2059202-sun.html

Morton was really riding a hot-streak this week. If the right-wing Alliance endorsement wasn't good enough, how about an endorsement from the liberal mayor of Calgary, Dave Bronconnier. The Calgary Sun reported a dispute between the 3 front-running candidates as to how and what should be done about Alberta's $10-billion infrastructure debt. Dinning has a 10-year (1 billion a year) provincial plan to address the issue. Olberg is promising to cut the time down to 5 years. Morton's policy would see municipalities and the province enter into funding arrangements, and let the municipalities go ahead and decide where the infrastructure needs are, rather than the province making all such decisions. Mr. Bronconnier said he hoped that Morton, or whoever wins, adopts the latter policy in dealing with the problem. Who knew that conservatives and liberals can agree that decentralization is a good thing after all!

http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2006/10/22/2104209.html

In a somewhat humourous turn, NDP leader Perry Mason....I mean Brian Mason called for all Leadership contenders to disclose their campaign contributors - just like Mark Norris has. I'm sure thats exactly what Norris wants - the endorsement of the Alberta NDP leader. In fairness though, it was a good thing of Norris to do it, and hopefully the rest of the group will follow suit (although, there do seem to be more pressing issues.)

So far, two candidates have endorsed Private/Public Health Care reforms - surprise suprise, they are Lyle Oberg and Ted Morton. If I were Jim Dinning, I would start rolling out substantive platform planks quickly...Lyle and Ted seem to be really rolling out substantive stuff on key conservative issues - I'm sure the Dinning camp must have something coming...soon I hope - the election is just a few weeks away. Here are the health care articles:

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2006/10/21/2087252-sun.html

https://www.lyleoberg.ca/my_vision_healthcare.php


What's this? A story on Ted Morton that actually portrays him as one of the most likeable guys in the race. What is this world coming to? What has happened to the left-wing media to make them write such things about such a well known and anti-Liberal conservative? Here is the story:

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=b93f4442-6713-40a0-9acd-6ee0c26e2114

Meanwhile, Jim Dinning just can't seem to get his side of the story out there. Jim, we know your a good guy...but please give us something to talk about other than why we should love our dogs and be nice to everyone. Paul Martin tried this - it doesn't work! Substance man, please....substance!!

http://www.570news.com/news/national/article.jsp?content=n101766A