UNITY FOR MACKAY, ANGER FOR O’TOOLE

Two main rivals approach Tory race worlds apart

EDMONTON • For candidates for the federal Conservative leadership, the route to victory runs through Alberta, chock-full as it is of party faithfuls whose votes are so valuable to winning the party’s race.

The path for a future Conservative leader to the Prime Minister’s Office, however, wends its way through Ontario and Quebec, where the nation’s electoral votes are most heavily concentrated, and where Conservatives have failed in the last two elections to make a winning case to the non-party faithful.

In recent weeks, Erin O’toole and Peter Mackay, the two frontrunners to head up the Tory party, have found themselves in Wild Rose Country, offering a pitch that recognizes the anger and frustration of westerners, while attempting to maintain a vision of a party and policies that they can sell in the 905 suburbs around Toronto.

As longtime conservative operator Ken Boessenkool recently put it, in a commentary for the CBC, “it is the irony of Conservative politics that people in Calgary need to worry about how the Conservative Party is selling itself around Toronto.” The key question facing the party and its leaders is: How does a party whose soul is so heavily western, with all the pro-oil, pro-pipeline and anti-carbon-tax commitment that requires, sell itself to the rest of the country where, for so many potential voters, those issues aren’t exactly top of mind.

On Thursday, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney officially threw his support behind leadership candidate Erin O’toole because, Kenney said, O’toole was the one who could best bridge that divide.