14,000 UCP members already signed up to vote on Jason Kenney's leadership
CBC
Alberta's governing United Conservative Party is expecting up to 20,000 of its members to register for an April 9 vote that will decide the fate of Premier Jason Kenney as leader.
As of Sunday, 13,718 members had registered for the leadership vote, UCP executive director Dustin van Vugt said in an email Sunday to constituency presidents.
The cutoff to sign up new party members for the vote was Saturday at midnight and Kenney's supporters — and his opponents, including newly-elected MLA Brian Jean — were campaigning hard to get new members registered in time.
With three weeks to go, registration for the event remains open and the number of party members attending is expected to surge, van Vugt said.
Party membership has more than doubled in advance of the vote, he said.
"It's not unreasonable to predict that we could get as high as 20,000 people, which is the same crowd Garth Brooks got each night on his record-breaking run through Edmonton a few years ago," van Vugt said in his Sunday email.
"We are currently at over four times the size of the last record-setting political event in Alberta, our founding convention in Red Deer in 2018 with 2,800 attendees."
If Kenney receives less than 50 per cent of the vote, he is out as party leader.
The vote is currently scheduled for the Cambridge Red Deer Hotel and Conference Centre.
All 241 rooms are sold out. The conference room is designed for about 2,000 people. The RCMP said last week that Mounties would help manage crowds and traffic around the venue.
The UCP has not answered questions from CBC News about how it would handle the Red Deer crowd.
But with registrations for the one-day event far outstripping capacity at the hotel, the party plans to share more details on the logistics of the vote in the week ahead.
"Our team is working day and night with outstanding party volunteers to ensure that our members' voices are heard," van Vugt said in his email.
In an email to CBC News on Monday, UCP spokesperson Dave Prisco reiterated that the logistics of the vote are still being worked out.
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