Naheed Nenshi elected new leader of the Alberta NDP

Alberta NDP members have overwhelmingly chosen former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi as their new leader.

After a commanding win with 86 per cent of members' votes, Nenshi told reporters in Calgary he is blown away by the support from across Alberta.

"The fact that they're putting in me — again, just for a second — their hopes and dreams for their community, for me, that's a really humbling thing," Nenshi said. "And it's something I'll try to live up to every day."

In his first speech as leader, Nenshi urged party members to redouble their effort to grow the Alberta NDP into an unstoppable machine that leads to an inevitable NDP win in the next provincial election, slated for October 2027.

The party's chief returning officer Amanda Freistadt announced the leadership vote results in Calgary Saturday afternoon, revealing Nenshi garnered 86 per cent of the 72,930 votes cast during the last month.

Voter turnout was 85.6 per cent to choose the leader to succeed Rachel Notley, who spent nearly a decade at the party's helm.

The leadership campaign began Feb. 5, and seven contenders ultimately registered.

After three withdrew, four candidates remained on the ballot: Edmonton MLA Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse, MLA and former Notley government health minister Sarah Hoffman, Calgary MLA and former justice minister Kathleen Ganley and Nenshi, who does not have a seat in the legislature.

Freistadt said Nenshi received 62,746 votes — or 86 per cent of ballots.

Ganley was a distant second with 8.1 per cent of ballots, followed by Hoffman with 4.2 per cent and Calahoo Stonehouse with 1.7 per cent.

Before encouraging members to broaden the appeal of the Alberta NDP to more voters, Nenshi turned his sights on Premier Danielle Smith.

Nenshi noted that Smith has said she is the most freedom-loving politician in Canada. But he said she has infringed on Albertans' rights by promising to limit medical treatments for gender-diverse youth, cast a chill on locally elected politicians by making it easier for the provincial government to overrule councillors, and passed a bill that lets the province vet any federal research grants to academia.

He said Albertans shouldn't accept such political interference.

"I think what she meant to say is she's the most power-loving politician in Canada," he said.

On the social media site X, the premier congratulated Nenshi on his leadership win and said she looked forward to their dialogue on how to best serve Albertans.

New leader's next steps

Following his victory speech, Nenshi told reporters he's in "no rush" to seek a seat in the Alberta legislature. He said he hasn't ruled out running in an upcoming byelection in Lethbridge-West, where nine-year NDP MLA and former environment minister Shannon Phillips has decided to step down.

Nenshi said he'd prefer to run in a Calgary riding during a general election, to represent his community.

"I actually see this next three years as a gift," he said, adding he plans to use the time to travel and meet voters across the province.

Pointing to Manitoba as an example, where voters last year chose an NDP government to replace Progressive Conservatives, Nenshi said citizens are turned off by the UCP version of conservatism and ravenous for an alternative.

"I was scared that my kind of politics — the politics of talking to people, of inspiring people to be bigger than themselves — was completely out of style," he said.

Alberta NDP members have also debated the future of the provincial party's affiliation with the federal NDP during the leadership campaign. A provincial membership automatically makes the person a member of the federal party, which some say is off-putting to more centrist citizens. Other NDP loyalists say the provincial party shouldn't abandon its roots.

Nenshi said he'd like party members to have that conversation and potentially vote on the issue as soon as possible, rather than letting it fester, unresolved.

Saturday on X, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said he looked forward to working with Nenshi.

"Together, we will continue to build the better world that Tommy Douglas dreamed of," he wrote.

Nenshi, 52, was Calgary mayor from 2010 to 2021. Prior to politics, he was a business professor at Calgary's Mount Royal University and a management consultant.

He was born in Toronto to parents of Indian ancestry, who moved to Canada from Tanzania. His family moved to Alberta when Nenshi was a toddler.

Calgarians might remember Nenshi most for his communication skills and hopeful messages when the city was deluged in a 2013 flood. He infamously wore purple clothes and accessories to emphasize his approach to civic politics was non-partisan. He also spearheaded a push for Calgary to host the 2026 Olympics, which a majority of Calgarians rejected in a vote.

Nenshi inherits a party that has experienced explosive growth during its first leadership contest in a decade.

Its 16,000 members ballooned to more than 85,000 people, who joined in time to cast a ballot for the new leader.

Among them is Edmontonian Ian Kellogg, who was attending the leadership event. He said Nenshi joining the leadership race nudged him to become an NDP member rather than only a voter and supporter.

"I'm not sure I would have joined if I didn't think, 'Wow, we've really got a possibility of having a leader with some charisma, with some talent, with some ability to meet with other people,'" Kellogg said, before the results were announced.