ANALYSIS | Who’s behind Nenshi’s Alberta NDP relaunch? Federal Liberals and NYC mayor’s ad agency | CBC News

Nearly a year and a half after Naheed Nenshi began serving as Alberta NDP leader, and about two years out from the next scheduled election, his party has determined it’s time to reintroduce him to Albertans this week.

The newly released video has all the elements you’d expect, or may have expected somewhere in the first 17 months of his leadership. His working-class roots at his family’s laundromat and Red Deer motel and then as Calgary mayor, the struggles that “ordinary Albertans” face and the crescendo-time uplifting speech in which he promises to do everything better than the current premier.

Some will call it a campaign-style ad. (Do political parties produce ads in any other style? Corporate safety video style? A blindfold-taste-test-style ad?)

To pull off this midterm relaunch, the NDP reached south of the border and hired a U.S. political ad agency that’s successfully been turning heads (and winning elections) for a while.

If you’ve not heard of Fight Agency, you may have seen some of their consultants’ viral work, or their success stories.

Zohran Mamdani, who was elected last week as New York City mayor (and his Bachelor-spoofing rose ad). John Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, a state Donald Trump won twice. And while they didn’t win with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in 2016, they helped build a significant force in American progressive politics.

Why Fight, other than the symmetry of two Muslim mayors of North American cities?

It’s not just that the agency has strung up many wins, like Mamdani’s, said Mike Burton, the NDP’s campaign director.

Traditionally conservative Alberta has characteristics of some of the non-traditional Democratic states where Fight consultants’ candidates have won, like Pennsylvania and Arizona, said Burton.

“They’re really strong at talking to working-class folks about a progressive message,” he told CBC News in an interview.

The criticism of the NDP’s unsuccessful 2023 election campaign, Burton continued, was that ads leaned too heavily on attacking Premier Danielle Smith.

This new video accuses her of a too-cozy approach to both separatists and Trump, but those are brief points in a three-minute message.

Most of it is telling the leader’s backstory, Albertans’ woes on affordability and in the health and education systems, and a series of pledges by Nenshi to improve it all — even if there are few specifics as to how he’d do that.

Nenshi’s party’s use of a buzz-worthy U.S. ad agency isn’t the only unconventional step he’s taken on his quest to take on the UCP, something he’s struggled with for most of his tenure as leader.

There’s also the people he’s surrounded himself with. Not only are they not typical New Democrats, but they’re also not New Democrats at all.

Nenshi has been quietly, steadily building up his team with former federal Liberals, rather than national NDP stalwarts like Brian Topp and Anne McGrath, both of whom worked with former premier Rachel Notley in government and on her campaigns.

Nenshi had started this trend last year when Jesse Chahal, a former prime minister’s office aide to Justin Trudeau, managed his successful leadership campaign.

He’s gone back to this federal well more recently, to kickstart this two-year drive to the 2027 election.

Burton, a driving force behind this new ad campaign, was chief of staff to Liberal ministers Marc Miller and Edmonton’s Amarjeet Sohi. The Jasper-born politico was also national field director for Mark Carney’s Liberal leadership victory before bowing out ahead of the federal election.

Recently taking over as caucus communications director is Andrew MacKendrick, former spokesperson for several federal cabinet ministers. 

Nenshi’s pollster is Dan Arnold from Pollara, the ex-Calgarian who polled for the Trudeau Liberals and was director of research and advertising in his prime minister’s office. (He also polled for the Notley-led NDP in 2023, making Arnold an early Liberal adopter of this cause.)

This staffing up with Liberals might provide fodder for the United Conservatives, who’ve long made sport of tying Notley and Nenshi to the Ottawa politicians who seldom score well in Alberta.

Bringing in so many federal Liberals is also out of step with NDP convention or orthodoxy, though the newish-to-the-party Nenshi hasn’t been shy of operating in that way previously.

“Any political operative who wants to stop Danielle Smith and her government has a place with us,” said Burton, who says he has routinely voted NDP provincially throughout his many years living around Western Canada, where orange is the default shade for progressives.

This federal-provincial party switching has been the “natural way” voters have behaved for a while, so it’s not surprising the Alberta NDP do the same, Burton added. (With the federal NDP’s plummet in both the polls and its number of seats in Parliament after the last election, such a trend may have accelerated.)

Nenshi’s new campaign on social media and internet video ads — broadcast TV may follow, Burton added — comes with the NDP enjoying a resurgence in popular support.

The NDP had narrowed what was a 14-point gap behind the UCP to five percentage points, in a Leger poll conducted in mid-October, during the province-wide teachers’ strike that Smith would end with the notwithstanding clause.

It also showed Nenshi’s leader approval rating at 43 per cent, ahead of Smith (38 per cent), the first time Leger has tracked the former Calgary mayor ahead of the premier.

Earlier, even partisan allies had argued Nenshi struggled with a reputation for professorial lectures. This ad may have ended with him addressing a rally with some of the same “ordinary Albertans” who appeared earlier in the video, but it avoids mentioning his Harvard University degree or his time as an actual professor at Mount Royal.

Also absent from this video: any of his recent time in question period, after finally becoming an MLA in June’s byelection — or any of the other 37 MLAs in the New Democrat caucus.

Of course, not even a Mamdani will win or lose on the quality or slickness of their ads. As campaign director, Burton’s next tasks before the election (be it fall 2027 or sooner) includes finding candidates to fill the new 89-seat slate with its new boundaries, which include new ridings in both Edmonton and Calgary that the NDP will charge hard for.

The Leger poll’s five percentage points between Smith’s party and Nenshi’s is thinner than the eight-point margin the UCP won with last election, Burton notes.

There’s still a ways to go before we find out whether some of that Mamdani mojo can rub off on the Alberta NDP. But inasmuch as politics is the battle to win hearts and minds, Albertans might consider this rebranding ad the Nenshi team’s next bite of that apple.