Liberals trying Supporter class despite failing for Alberta Liberals

Liberals be warned: the supporter class may not save the party.

The Liberals have essentially bet their future on a new supporter class, which they officially launched Wednesday with a press conference at the Ottawa Convention Centre.

The new category allows for a second class of members who don't pay a membership fee but will be allowed to vote for the next leader.

During the press conference, interim leader Bob Rae and party president Mike Crawley billed the plan as its centrepiece for renewal.

"It's absolutely essential that we renew the party," Rae said.

"We could have played it safe. We could have done things in a different way but we realized that we had a chance to make a real difference as to how our party organizes itself and how we move forward."

But what if the plan fails? What happens then?

Would the Liberals be able to survive that embarrassment?

According to Jen Gerson of the National Post, failure is a very real possibility.

Gerson looked at the Alberta Liberal Party's experience with a similar supporter scheme that they introduced prior to their leadership race last September.

Alberta's Grits did manage to accrue 25,000 new followers but that didn't equate to any kind of success.

The voter turnout rate for the leadership race was a paltry 31.8 per cent and the party only raised half the money they did for the 2008 campaign.

And, in last week's election, the Liberals took just 10 per cent of the vote compared to 26 per cent of the vote in 2008.

"Well, the proof is in the pudding after the election. [Unpaid supporter status] did not work. It didn't attract volunteers or financial donations and it didn't attract a lot of candidates," Hugh MacDonald, who lost out to Raj Sherman in the race for the party leadership, told the National Post.

"For all the hoopla and promotion that it got, it was, in my view, a dismal failure."

(Reuters photo)