It’s coming down to the wire in the race to succeed Ralph Klein as Premier of Alberta, and a blogger known only as “MC” at studiosavant has posted some helpful information about the three candidates left standing.  An unnamed creative individual also posted the “Fight Night!” poster shown here.

PACE, the Professional Arts Coalition of Edmonton, sent questions to each of the candidates, asking them to outline their "Arts and Culture" policy.

In keeping with Jim Dinning’s status as the favoured candidate of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party elite, he responded with promises to spend mucho dinero in support of the arts, along with the customary boilerplate about how art contributes to our quality of life blah blah blah.

Dark-horse candidate Ed Stelmach admitted he doesn’t actually have an arts policy, but made one up on the spot.  Arts are very important and I promise to waste devote oodles of taxpayers’ money to fund “Alberta’s culture, arts and community spirit”.  Is it just me, or is Mr Stelmach’s statement rather similar to Mr Dinning’s?

The final candidate, Ted “Scary” Morton, refused to respond to the questionnaire.  A very wise move on his part, for it earned him a crucial endorsement.

Ted Morton, who likely has even less of an art policy than Stelmach, refused to respond to PACE's questionaire… which surprised me, somewhat, so I went to his website, and emailed his team personally, asking as a 'potential voter' (no, I'm not really gonna vote), what his arts policy was… I too received no response. I hope he wins!

Same here.  Whaddya bet Mr Morton shares Monty Python’s view of the value of art?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imxb8IShtoc

You don’t suppose the Ralph in that sketch is the same Ralph as . . . Nah!  Couldn’t be!

Tomorrow’s the big day when we find out which of the three philistines will take over as Premier of Canada’s cultural economic leader.

h/t: the incomparable felix hominum

UPDATE (3 Dec.): Stelmach's da man.