Alberta politics are shaping up to be pretty interesting these days. With things moving along in the Alberta PC leadership race, the Alberta Liberals have been taking advantage of the Tories inward preoccupations by nominating candidates across Alberta over the past six months.
With all their incumbent MLA's now nominated, there are some interesting nomination races shaping up around the province.
Kent Hehr and Keith Purdy have both declared their intention to seek the Alberta Liberal nomination to run for election in Calgary Buffalo in the next Alberta Provincial Election.
Kent Hehr is a 35 year-old quadriplegic lawyer with Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP. Hehr is also the President of the Canadian Paraplegic Association (Alberta) and Chairman of the City of Calgary Advisory Committee on Accessibility.
Keith Purdy is a Calgary-based same-sex rights advocate. Interestingly, Purdy ran for the Alberta NDP in the 2001 Provincial Election in Calgary Mountain View, and the Federal NDP in Calgary South Centre in 2004. Does Purdy's move to the Alberta Liberals signal a shift of New Democrat support to the Liberals in Alberta?
Here are the 2004 Provincial Election results from Calgary Buffalo:
Harvey Cenaiko, PC - 3,365 (43.5%)Calgary Buffalo has been represented by Solicitor General Harvey Cenaiko since 2001 and was previously represented by Alberta Liberal MLA's Sheldon Chumir (1986-1992) and Gary Dickson (1992-2001).
Terry Taylor, AbLib - 2,815 (36.4%)
Grant Neufeld, Grn - 670 (8.7%)
Cliff Hesby, NDP - 457 (5.9%)
Nadine Hunka, AA - 294 (3.8%)
Elizabeth K. Fielding, SC - 73 (0.9%)
Carl Schwartz, AP - 56 (0.7%)
Voter Turnout - 7,730 (31.5%)
As usual, it should be a close race come next election.
Posts
8 comments:
That's all very nice, but how far will all this take them? The last poll saw the Alberta Liberals drop by almost 50% from their provincial election result (Nov. 2004) - despite Klein's Third Way and other shenanigans. One would have expected a boost in their "ratings", but not such a colossal drop.
In my electoral district, the Alberta Liberals don't even have 4 registered members.
Alberta politics seem to work in a weird way with polls, not that I would really trust them in the first place. I always like to look at the poll right before the 1997 election that had the Liberals at 18% and on the road to winning 2 seats.
On election night, they took 32% and won 18 seats.
I am confident that the Alberta Liberals are in a position to gain seats in the next election, regardless of what a Calgary Herald poll says.
I don't much believe in polls either. I'd rather talk to people in my constituency and around town, and I have yet to find anyone who has voted or would vote Liberal. This is more telling than any poll out there.
Gain seats? Bleh.
They'll still be in opposition. :)
They'll be lucky if they don't finish third (behind the Alberta Alliance party, or something like that).
@Toronto Tory: Plus we have a rule here in Alberta: an opposition party is NEVER elected into government.
Rule #2: any "dynasty", after having been removed from power, NEVER EVER is returned to power. The Alberta Liberals already had their shot at running this province, and that's it. When a dynasty gets eventually removed, it is replaced by a spanking-new party that Albertans, resourceful as they are, create from scratch.
Considering Alberta has only seen 3 changes in government over the past 100 years, I'd hardly consider that a rule, werner.
Also, how could your first rule ever be true? Any party not in government is an opposition party... Peter Lougheed was official opposition leader before he formed government.
As for the Alberta Alliance, I hardly can see a groundswell of support for those wackos outside 5 or 6 deep rural ridings.
Read the truth about Werner Patels
Post a Comment