Leadership race facts
Jason Kenney captured 35, 623 votes, representing 61 per cent of the total leadership vote.
Brian Jean garnered 18,336 votes, or 31.5 per cent. He is the only candidate who holds a seat in the provincial legislature.
Doug Schweitzer finished third with 4,273 votes, or 7.3 per cent. An estimated 2,000 party members attended the BMO Centre on the Stampede Grounds in Calgary for the leadership convention.
What’s next? A founding convention to establish governing policies and principles. Constituency associations have already been working on amalgamation and the plan is to have a full slate of candidates ready for the 2019 spring election.
Having thrown his support behind Jason Kenney during the United Conservative Party leadership race, it’s no surprise that local Wildrose MLA Drew Barnes is celebrating Saturday’s results.
“I am very pleased,” said Wildrose MLA Drew Barnes late Saturday evening, about Kenney’s win. “Everywhere I went, Cypress-Medicine Hatters told me that they wanted a fiscally conservative future, that they backed Jason Kenney and his strong conservative beliefs, and of course, Jason being in Cypress-Medicine Hat 12 times in the last year shows that we now have a leader that supports our area.”
While Barnes was happy with the results, former MLA Blake Pedersen was not. “I stayed a member just long enough to vote,” said Pedersen. “I did not support the idea of unity, then going into the leadership race I voted for Doug Schweitzer, but I knew that was a long shot. He was the most moderate of the three. Now that he is beat, and Jason Kenney is the leader, I will not be associated with them.”
Barnes says backing Kenney was an easy choice, and added that he was not surprised to see him win.
“He was right for me because of his fiscal conservative beliefs,” he said. ‘Everyone I’ve talked to that’s worked with him says what a great team builder he is, and that’s what we need. We need all four million Albertans to pull together, and to get back to being a leader in Canada. The NDP has left a huge fiscal mess for us to clean up, and we don’t want to pass that to the next generation, we want to handle that ourselves, and I know Jason Kenney is the guy I can work with to make that happen.”
Pedersen says now that Kenney has won, he is interested to see how the UCP shapes up, and if there will be problems internally.
“I think they think that combining the two will be as easy as one plus one equals two,” he said. “I don’t think it will be. I think there’s still a lot of discord and disunity within the party, and you’re going to see that fallout over the next little while I think. There were a number of PC members and a lot of members from the Wildrose side that stuck around to try and have their voice heard.
“Having an outsider come in like Jason Kenney, there’s going to be some friction there, I don’t know how much, but I think you will see a number of challenges for the UCP in unity, and people moving on and looking for different options from different parties.”