2020 was a calamitous year for Alberta, like most places, but particularly for the governing United Conservative Party. While public dissatisfaction with their governance rose steadily throughout the year, many people seized upon rising fundraising totals for the opposition NDP and shrinking fundraising totals for the government as evidence of a desired shift within the province. To the delight of the government's boosters, the UCP delivered a strong fourth quarter performance at the end of 2020 that not only defeated NDP fundraising in those months, but over the year entirely. Perhaps fears of an NDP resurgence were phantoms, not real...
But this recent success only makes the recently released Q1 disclosures more disappointing for them. It is bad to be out-fundraised by your opposition - and in this case the NDP more than lapped them 2:1. It is embarrassing to be out-fundraised in terms of large donors (people donating amounts greater than $250/year) when you are a conservative party, a party of the deep-pocketed. Lastly, it is embarrassing to be out-fundraised by small donors by a scale greater than 3:1 - the NDP outraised the UCP $800,000 to $233,000. Perhaps most significantly, though, the Q1 UCP saw a drop off in donations exceeding 67% from Q4 2020, and this during tax season.
Historically, the second and third quarters of a year are dry spells for UCP fundraising (in fairness, their supporters were preparing for an election in 2018, fought one in 2019, and suffered a plague in 2020 - but three makes a pattern), so we could anticipate further financial troubles for this troubled party. Fears of an NDP resurgence are not phantasmagorical, but solid, and their support is stiffening as it deepens. Or so it would seem.
However, one thing stood out to me as I briefly surveyed the UCP disclosures for the first time earlier today: lots of UCP MLAs popped out of the page at the top of the donor list. It made me wonder: was UCP support even hollower than it appeared? Is this a party essentially laundering its government salaries back into itself? I had to have a look, and here is what I found.
To get started, lets keep in mind this number: $591,597.71. This is the amount the party raised during Q1 2021. Of this amount, $233,450.45 came from donations below $250, while the remaining $358,147.26 came from individuals donating above $250.
The current donation limit for an individual in Alberta is $4243, and the following UCP MLAs donated that amount: Devin Dreeshen, Tanya Fir, Nathan Horner, Jason Kenney, Tyler Shandro, and Travis Toews; their donations thus total $25,458. Meanwhile, Children's Services Minister Rececca Schulz missed the memo and only donated to the old limit of $4000, but at least her husband Cole chipped in another $3000. So far, $32,458.
Going further down the list, Matt Wolf, Twitter's Mr. Congeniality, once again put in his 200,000 cents. His equal, at least in the legislature, is the otherwise unnotable MLA Searle Turton. Rick McIvor made a contribution of $1,150; Tanya Fir's mother Josie with $1000; Dan Williams with $630; staffer, and former Daveberta cohost Ryan Hastman with $626.16; MLA Shane Getson with $600; UCP Executive Directer Dustin Van Vugt with $568; and, rounding out the donors north of $500, pipeline enthusiast and MLA Michaela Glasgo with a donation of $525. This brings us to a running total of $41,557.16, or 7% of the total.
In between $500 and $250, the list starts off with some celebrity, with Leela Aheer finally making an appearance with a donation of $450. Tying her in enthusiasm are Rick McIvor's wife, Christine, and MLA Joseph Schow. Roger Reid, MLA for the riding which includes the ever consequential Eastern Slopes, put in his $400. MLA Matthew Jones comes next with $390; then fellow Calgary MLA Josephine Pon with $325; staffer, and high school classmate of mine Evan Menzies with $301, who just beats out fellow staffer Brock Harrison by the narrowest, Price-Is-Right margins ($300).
Now of course, this is just the first quarter of what will surely be a long and bitter year, but I couldn't help notice the absence of so many UCP MLAs from the list above. Surely a few are stewing around below that magic $250 threshold that makes anonymity disappear, but it was a surprise to me, and likely the UCP braintrust that the list above has only 17 out of the UCP's 62 remaining MLAs. Surprising too was the facelessness of many of their MLAs; I had to run each name through Wikipedia and the donor list just to be sure there wasn't anyone I missed. I was chagrined as a political junkie to have not heard of most of them.
In the end, you probably came here to find out how incestuous the UCP's fundraising situation has become. The answer, at least as far as I, with my limited means and intellect could determine is $44,623.16, which represents only 7.5% of their overall quarterly fundraising. However, it makes up 12.5% of the big donor money received in Q1 2021.
Now this share is unlikely to grow throughout the year - there are simply more Albertans than UCP MLA or staffers, and a turn around in the province's fortunes could turn around people's views of the UCP. Time will tell.
Fun facts
In the whole disclosure, there are only 74 big donors from Alberta's second city, Edmonton - a few of whom were donating to Constituency associations in Calgary. Weird. (Edmonton appears in a search 83 times; 207 for Calgary). Representing the province's lesser cities are ten donors each from Red Deer and Sherwood Park; five each from Lethbridge, Lloydminster and Spruce Grove; four from Leduc; and 3 each from Medicine Hat, Okotoks and Cochrane. At this point I grew bored and stopped counting.
