Jason Kenney’s inexorable rise in Alberta politics has been more difficult than it looked. Can he close the deal? (From 2018)
The next chapter of Jason Kenney’s life began when the last one decisively ended, on federal election night 2015. Dozens of Conservatives held an impromptu wake for their government at the James Joyce Irish Pub in downtown Calgary.
Kenney has sold himself convincingly to Alberta conservatives, but now must close the deal with Alberta as a whole, with no shortage of unknowns between him and the brass ring. The provincial economy might recover before he can rush to its rescue; Notley is showing talent as a defender of her province against pipeline opponents; the leader and his grassroots backers have yet to decide just how far from the political centre they dare to plant their party flag.
On a February Friday night, his Dodge Ram stops first at a UCP association dinner in predominantly South Asian northeast Calgary. Spotting somebody’s Realtor lapel pin, Kenney asks: “Still selling those houses?” Hearing that one woman arrived from India in 2010 while he was immigration minister, he quips: “I signed your papers!” Entering the hotel banquet hall, he greets one man in Arabic, and in the next breath says hi to another in Urdu.
The Saturday after the Indian and Chinatown suppers, he takes in a men’s wild-game supper at an Alliance Church in small-town Daysland, then spends Sunday at a meet-and-greet at a golf course on a Calgary bedroom community’s rural outskirts. Here, this tireless political salesman warms up the crowd with a farm joke he heard in the area decades ago: “How many politicians does it take to lubricate a combine? Just one, but sometimes you’ve got to roll them through a couple times.
Still, his solitary personal life is clearly a defining character trait—Kenney has never had a public romantic partner to divert his attention or encumber his work ethic. That has allowed him to routinely log 20-hour work days and 20-event weekends , a regimen that has made friends worry about his health and his ability to delegate in the leadership role. “We used to joke with him: Jason, you have to find time to get married and have your own family.
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