When somebody sent me a note saying Paul Hinman had started and was leading yet another new registered political party in Alberta, I couldn’t believe it. I had to go to the Elections Alberta website to confirm it and even then I had to look twice.
The Wildrose Loyalty Coalition was registered as soon as the writ for the provincial election dropped and the leader is none other than Paul Hinman.
I called Hinman up and as soon as he answered I said, “You must be the most stubborn SOB I have ever met!” Paul chuckled and agreed.
I have known Paul Hinman for a long time and consider him to be something of a political mentor. He has always remained true to his personal social convictions, while being fully dedicated to libertarian political principles. One of the first things he told me when I met him was that I must read The Law by Frédéric Bastiat and I did. The book strongly influenced the development of my political and moral views. That was almost twenty years ago when Hinman was the leader of and sole MLA sitting in the legislature for the Alberta Alliance Party.
Hinman’s story is a tale of political victories and heartbreaks. In the 2004 Alberta general election, he won a seat in Cardston-Taber-Warner in an upset with a narrow margin of 129 votes. It was the first time a candidate on the right had taken a seat from the Progressive Conservative Party in decades. Hinman then won the leadership of the party and fostered a merger with a breakaway group to form the Wildrose Alliance Party.
In 2008, Hinman led 61 candidates with the Wildrose Alliance Party into a general election. While the party made electoral gains, they won no seats and Hinman lost his own seat by 39 votes.
In 2009, Hinman resigned as the party leader and triggered a leadership election which would select Danielle Smith as the leader of the newly rebranded Wildrose Party. Paul then ran in a by-election in Calgary-Glenmore and pulled off yet another upset victory winning the seat by fewer than 300 votes. In the 2012 general election, Hinman lost the seat as the Hunsperger scandal decimated urban support for the Wildrose Party.
Hinman then took something of a political hiatus until 2020 when he took the leadership of the Wildrose Independence Party. His term was tumultuous and short and despite having a respectable showing as a candidate in the 2022 Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche by-election, his own party board tore him from the leadership in a battle that ended in the courts and left the party in shambles.
Despite Hinman’s indefatigable history, I was still astounded to hear that he was back in the ring and had registered another party. The infighting and failure of the last party would have made almost anybody give up on politics.
To register a party in Alberta is no easy task. It takes thousands of signatures on an official petition of registered voters in a limited period of time. There is another method though and Paul used it. If a group can register candidates in over half of the constituencies of the province in a general election, the group will gain official party status. Hinman has 50 registered candidates. It’s amazing that he managed to get 50 people committed and registered as candidates in such short time while sliding under the radar but he pulled it off.
I asked Paul about the first question he is sure to be hit with in this election; how can he avoid vote splits that could put more NDP MLAs in seats. He explained that of the 50 registered candidates, only five of them will be mounting serious campaigns. Those five will all be running in constituencies where the NDP have no chance of winning. Hinman himself will be running in Taber-Warner where the conservative vote could be split five ways and still wouldn’t let an NDP candidate slip in.
The policies and principles held by the new party will be much like those of the Wildrose Independence Party with a strong focus on provincial autonomy and citizen’s initiated recall of politicians. Hinman feels the UCP has some bad elements within it and needs a strong presence contesting it from the right to keep it honest.
So why the long biography on Hinman?
Well, folks unfamiliar with him need to understand that he is not a man to be dismissed. He is a campaigning and organizational workhorse during and between elections. He just doesn’t seem to know how to give up. Even if only for his own good.
Do I think his fledgling party will win a few seats?
I highly doubt it. Somebody would have to give me some pretty good odds before I would bet on them winning a seat.
That said, I wouldn’t dare count them out and even if the odds are long, they are not zero.
Hinman seems to thrive on being underestimated and to specialize in electoral upsets.
A few of the rural races in this Alberta election just got a whole lot more interesting.
