Redford renews ‘dad’s old party’
Tories secure resounding mandate to continue reign
It may not look like your father’s Progressive Conservative party but the result was awfully familiar Monday night.
The Tory dynasty that has governed Alberta for the past 41 years will get another four years in office with another sizable majority.
The win by Premier Alison Redford’s party may not be quite as massive as some of the PC landslides rolled up by her idol Peter Lougheed in the past, but the victory means the Tories will become the longestserving provincial government in Canadian history.
“Tonight is a very happy night for the Progressive Conservative party of Alberta,” she told supporters.
The victory means Redford becomes, not only Alberta’s first woman premier, but the province’s first elected woman premier.
It’s a remarkable vindication for the former justice minister who ran as an outsider in last year’s Tory leadership race and won a come-from-behind victory over frontrunner Gary Mar.
“I talked about change in my leadership campaign. We began to introduce change in the past seven months. I asked Albertans to have trust that we could deliver change. I promise Albertans we will,” she told reporters.
Redford pitched the election as a choice between two visions of Alberta’s future, promoting her view of a cosmopolitan Alberta taking a new leadership role in Canada against what she said was Wildrose’s idea to put up a firewall around the province.
She appealed to non-traditional PC voters even as the Wildrose ate up the right-wing support that had traditionally made up part of the Tory base.
“It’s been a battle and our folks came through and our leader hit the right chords with people about what the future of Alberta looks like with an Alison Redford government and now it’s up to the PC government to fulfil those promises,” said PC party
Our leader hit the right chords with people about what the future of Alberta looks like with an Alison Redford government. PC PARTY PRESIDENT BILL SMITH
president Bill Smith.
“We’re talking about a vision and I think premier Redford and her team are going to make that vision a reality.”
Early in the evening, Tory campaign strategist Stephen Carter said he was “very, very confident” of another majority government.
He said the campaign shifted in the last week.
“The last week is when people really start to pay attention . . . Then I think people were seeing a different type of campaign from our competitors. They looked at it. They looked at it very closely,” he told reporters at PC campaign headquarters at the Metropolitan Centre in downtown Calgary.
Redford will have to fill a number of cabinet posts because of retirements and defeats of heavy hitters such as Ted Morton.