Calgary’s Conservative stalwarts help deflect Wildrose surge

Vote result across city defies early opinion polls

The city of Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein remained loyal to the Tories under new leader Alison Redford.

Although polls had consistently shown a strong Wildrose lead in Alberta’s biggest city, voters appeared to coalesce in the final days behind the party that came out mid-campaign with the slogan “the right kind of change” — even if that party has been in power for nearly 41 years.

As both Redford and Danielle Smith blitzed Calgary on the campaign’s final day, Redford urged voters to consider that all of Canada was watching how the province would act.

“I feel they’ve done a good job for Alberta, and just wanted to stick with them,” said Kevin Butler, a stalwart Tory voter in Calgary-currie, after casting his ballot.

The Tories were poised to nearly sweep the city’s 25 ridings, except for two downtown Liberal ridings and a small clutch of Wildrose wins.

Many decisions were likely made at the last minute, political scientist Lori Williams said — an explanation that likely explains the inaccuracy of all the pre-election polling.

“I’ve spoken to people who went to the voting station today and still (hadn’t) made up their minds,” the Mount Royal University professor said.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said: “I certainly think that Calgarians really took some time over the weekend to look at what the parties offered . . . at to determine who they want to represent this city and who will be able to do this on the international stage.”

Beyond its new southern rural base — including all the ridings around Calgary — Danielle Smith’s party won’t have a much bigger city beachhead than the two seats it had going into the election. Paul Hinman, the former Wildrose leader who won Calgary-glenmore in a 2009 byelection, succumbed to the Tory wave, while floor-crosser Heather Forsyth was in a dogfight for her political survival, after winning five straight terms as a PC.

All 13 Tory incumbents in the city hung on, including ministers Jonathan Denis in Calgary-acadia and Manmeet Bhullar in Calgary-greenway. Premier Alison Redford, who was believed to be in trouble in Calgary-elbow, also cruised to poll-defying victory.

Calgary is a city that had known nothing but Alberta Tory dominance since 1971, when Calgary lawyer Lougheed first swept to power.

Under ex-mayor Ralph Klein, the party won every riding in 2001, but slid subsequently. The Liberals’ five seats in 2008 while northerner Ed Stelmach was in power was the strongest-ever showing for the opposition in the Tory era.

With staunchly conservative voters expected to bleed off heavily to Danielle Smith’s party, the governing Tories had banked on expanding their base on the progressive side. They aimed to scoop up voters who may normally pick Liberals or another left-of-centre party.

The strategy, branded “scare politics” by Wildrose members, seems to have worked.

“Woke up. Showered. Went out. Begrudgingly voted PC for the first time in my life. Went home. Showered again,” writer Marcello Di Cintio posted on Twitter.

The party had hotly pursued inner-city ridings like Calgary-currie, which went Liberal in the last two elections but was a Tory pickup this time.

Erin Ross said she’s voted all over the political map before. In Currie, she selected Tory Christine Cusanelli, whom she believed offered the best chance of defeating Smith’s party of splinter conservatives.

“That was part of it, but the Wildrose candidate in this riding didn’t have too much information available to us, either,” Ross said.

The Tories had pressed hard in the campaign’s home stretch against seemingly homophobic and intolerant comments by some of the Wildrose candidates — including Calgary pastor Ron Leech, who said Caucasians were better able to represent all constituents than Muslims or Sikhs were.

Nenshi lambasted those remarks last week, and also jabbed Smith for not showing enough leadership to firmly denounce them. After a phone call to Nenshi, she did more clearly disavow intolerance on the third-last day of campaigning.

In the deep southwest riding of Calgary-lougheed, 20-yearold Meagan Bec said the concerns about what a Wildrose government might do on same-sex equality rights helped her decision to go Tory.

“I didn’t’ really agree with them on gay rights,” Bec said. “I think it’s a bad idea to be kind of stepping back.”

The Tories handily took that riding as well. Two-term backbencher Dave Rodney bested lawyer John Carpay — a social conservative who shied away from media the entire campaign.

But in interviews with other Calgary-lougheed voters outside a polling station, it was clear there was much anger-with the long-ruling Tories and controversies like committee whose MLAS got paid monthly but hadn’t met since 2008.

“You can be as arrogant as you want, but we have to send a message that you can’t get away with it forever,” Don Sinclair said.

The Tories had promised a renewed construction blitz if re-elected, offering to use surpluses for expansions on the campuses of both University of Calgary and Mount Royal University. The party also promised new schools by the dozen, and 140 family care clinics provincewide.

The Wildrose party refused to promise anything on the infrastructure front, pledging instead to slow down such growth spending.