Neudorf recall mystery deepens
By Lethbridge Herald on December 13, 2025.
Alexandra Noad
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
There’s a second “mystery man” in the Nathan Neudorf recall campaign to join absentee organizer Ryan Tanner, according to two city women who came forward with their story this week.
Lucretia Apperloo and Barb Phillips both sent emails to recallneudorf@gmail.com after Elections Alberta announced that a notice of Recall Petition for Neudorf had been accepted Nov. 25.
After they both sent a few follow-up emails, they finally received a response asking them to meet a a campaign volunteer at a local Tim Horton’s on Dec. 2. The meeting was supposed to be about signing up the two as canvassers to collect signatures for the petition.
Both say they had to send multiple emails before they got that response, and the email said they would be meeting the volunteer co-ordinator, a man named “Mike.”
Apperloo says she arrived a little bit early to grab a bite to eat, expecting to see others like her who were looking to sign up. But that wasn’t the case.
“I knew a lot of people were waiting to get involved, so I was expecting there to a bit of a buzz and I kind of sat around and there were other people there,” she told the Herald.
“But they were visiting (with each other) and I’m like ‘oh, this is kind of weird, nobody else is here for (canvassing’).”
Shortly after 8 a.m., said Apperloo, a man walked in carrying a stack of papers. The man said he was “Mike” and apologized for being late, adding that he came from the west side.
According to legislation, canvassers involved in a provincial recall campaign must have lived in the electoral division for a minimum of three months prior to volunteering.
At the time, however, Apperloo didn’t think anything of it and proceeded to fill out an application.
While she was doing that, Phillips walked into the restaurant and introduced herself to Mike. She had experience with the Forever Canadian petition and had some questions for Mike, including who Ryan Tanner was.
Phillips told the Herald that Mike claimed he didn’t know who Ryan Tanner was, or how a recall petition worked.
“That was the red flag for me,” she said. “Who gets out of bed at 8 o’clock in the morning to come to sit at a Tim Horton’s if you’re not really in the loop?”
When Mike couldn’t answer her questions, Phillips handed back the sign-up form and told him she didn’t feel comfortable filling it out.
After Phillips left, Apperloo had a brief conversation with Mike, who admitted he was unfamiliar with the recall process.
“I said I was kind of surprised there weren’t more people here because I know people wanted to sign and then he says, ‘I don’t even really know what all of this is about.’”
Apperloo said she explained the process to him, then asked where he got the forms if he’d never met Tanner. Mike replied that he’d got them from Nathan Neudorf’s office.
“He said, ‘well, Sariah gave me a call’ and I said ‘Sariah, like Nathan Neudorf’s office manager?’ and he says, ‘yeah, she gave me a call to come bring these papers down to you.’”
Confused, Apperloo said she asked Mike why Neudorf would be in on his own recall, then had to further explain recalls to him.
After that interaction, Apperloo left the meeting and later made a phone call to Elections Alberta, who asked her to send an email describing the incident.
Apperloo got a ticket number for her inquiry, but she hasn’t received any more information, or her canvassing package, in the last 10 days.
Neudorf has denied any involvement in his recall or any association with Ryan Tanner.
“I have no relationship with Ryan Tanner and I’m not involved in any way on my own recall,” he said in an interview with the Herald. “It saddens me that it’s gone to this level provincially.”
He added that the recall process isn’t how democracy was meant to work.
“I think more and more people are realizing that…we’ll have to let it play its course and see where things go in the new year. It could cost a lot of money to do verifications.”
Meanwhile, Apperloo encourages anyone having trouble getting a response from Tanner to send an email to Elections Alberta. She also called out Tanner for not doing anything to recruit volunteers for the recall effort.
“To me it seems very cowardly,” she said. “You’re just putting your tail between your legs and running away and not responding to people who are trying to reach out to you.”
The deadline for collecting the required 13,000 signatures from Lethbridge East voters is Feb. 23. So far as the Herald has been able to ascertain, there had been no signatures obtained by deadline on Friday.
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Quote from albertapolitics.ca:
“UCP supporters seem to have set up a false-front petition drive against their own MLA to stymie better-organized foes in one case – that of the petition against Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf, MLA for Lethbridge-East. Could there be more? That’s not clear yet either.”
Also, from this same website in an earlier blog re: the recall legislation the quote from Shakespeare: “the UCP are are hoisting their own petard,” and, “how embarrassing it would be to revoke their own silly legislation.”
Re: the UCP now, on an almost daily basis: this stuff just cannot be made up.
Now, ‘Mike’ will be banished to the UCP gravel pit to break rocks until this tempest dies down …