Jansen takes decisive victory in North West
Progressive Conservative Party candidate Sandra Jansen extended a 15-year Tory stronghold in Calgary-north West, a riding drastically different in makeup than during the last election race following a 2010 redesign of its boundaries.
Jansen, Tory leader Alison Redford’s manager of communications during Redford’s time as premier since last fall and a former CTV News anchor, is a new candidate who won handily to keep Calgary-north West right of centre while fending off another rightleaning opponent, Chris Challis of the Wildrose.
Challis, a 40-year-old former oilfield service and transportation company executive, worked on Wildrose MLA Paul Hinman’s successful 2009 byelection campaign to represent Calgary-glenmore. Also vying to win office in Calgary-north West was Liberal party candidate Robert Prcic, a University of Calgary law and society student; NDP candidate and oilsands worker Brian Malkinson, 27; computer consultant Troy Millington of the Alberta Party; and the Evergreen Party of Alberta’s Bryan Hunt, a software developer, writer and filmmaker.
Calgary-north West is now made up of only about half its former self, and also includes about one-seventh of the former Calgary-bow riding and a sliver of Calgary-foot-hills-Rocky View, while much of the former Calgary-north West was portioned off to the east to form the new, hotly contested adjacent Calgary Hawkwood riding.
With a population of 44,949, the 2008 voter turnout in Calgary-north West was 40.8 per cent, a low number that prompted one active local community group— the Rocky Ridge Royal Oak Community Association — to issue a rallying cry on its Facebook page on Monday to “get out there and use this privilege to get at least 80 per cent of us out there.”