BARNES PLAYS LOYALTY CARD
Party candidate vows he will never join PC ranks
It was the holiday season last December and Drew Barnes had wrapped up business at the Alberta legislature.
The 53-year-old rookie MLA was about to drive home to Medicine Hat after a wrenching legislative session in the capital.
The Wildrose party had endured a rocky two-month stretch that saw the official Opposition lose four byelections, watch two MLAs flee to the Tory benches and another quit to sit as an Independent.
But Barnes says he wasn’t prepared for what happened inside caucus the next day: a pitch that Wildrose MLAs should cross the legislature floor en masse — led by leader Danielle Smith — and merge with their sworn enemies: the Progressive Conservative government led by Jim Prentice.
“I will never be a Progressive Conservative,” Barnes says now. “I am a Wildroser.” Today, Barnes is seeking the job that Smith abandoned last December.
He hopes to win the support of about 24,000 party members Saturday and take on the job of holding together — and healing — a fragile party in its most difficult days.
Barnes joined Wildrose in 2010, having never been involved in poli- tics before, except as a 10-year-old boy delivering flyers for Conservative MP Walter Dinsdale in Brandon, Man.
His family moved to Medicine Hat in 1974 and by 1983, Barnes earned a commerce degree from the University of Alberta.
He married his wife Frances in 1987 and they have three boys, ranging in age from 22 to 15 years old. Barnes sold real estate in Medicine Hat for years and ran his own business before entering politics.
Longtime friend Ray Leronowich says Barnes was frequently the top real estate salesman in the area through his meticulous planning and hard work — qualities he believes make him a natural leader.
“He made a plan, he reviewed his plan and he worked his plan. It was really something to see,” says Leronowich, who met Barnes in 1988.
Barnes’ political awakening dates to 2009.
He became intrigued by a fledgling political movement taking root in southern Alberta and decided to run for the Wildrose party in Medicine Hat-Cypress, upsetting Tory MLA Len Mitzel in the 2012 election.
Wildrose MLA Rick Strankman remembers Barnes and fellow caucus mate Pat Stier went to Edmonton for their first legislative session. Living in the same hotel, the trio became friends.
Barnes soon got a first-hand lesson in hardball politics against the longest-serving government in Canadian history.
“I saw him in the house one day get lambasted by the government ... and Drew took it in somewhat of a personal nature,” says Strankman, MLA for Drumheller- Stettler.
“He said, ‘I just want to do the right thing.’ ... Drew has the depth of conviction.”
By last fall, the Wildrose found itself on the ropes after the byelection losses.
As the legislature wound up on Dec. 10, a party caucus meeting was called for the following day in Edmonton. Barnes put off a return trip home.
“At the end of the meeting it was mentioned that we wanted to approach the PC caucus about a big merger, all of the members would go and it would take a long time,” he says.
“Even then, I said I’m not interested in ever being a PC ... don’t do it.
Events escalated quickly, however.
On Dec. 13, Barnes got a phone call saying a merger was going ahead.
“I hung up the phone, and I phoned Danielle, thinking we’d be talking about how this wasn’t going to happen. Instead, my last words to her were: ‘I don’t care how many of you are going and I don’t care what you’re getting — I’m not going,’” Barnes says.
In the days that followed, Barnes became the most outspoken of the five remaining Wildrose MLAs.
He jumped into the leadership race and much of his campaign has focused on his unwillingness to abandon Wildrose.
Loyalty is a point he hammers home frequently; he wouldn’t leave while others betrayed the 440,000 Albertans who voted for the party in 2012.
Barnes is clearly trumpeting the loyalty card in the leadership contest, says political analyst David Taras at Mount Royal University.
“He’s the un-Danielle — I’m not Danielle and I stayed loyal and hung in tough,” Taras says.
Personally, Barnes is easygoing and quick to laugh with friends and family, says Ian Strachan, who has known Barnes for 40 years. The two play hockey together on a team called the Scoreboard Pylons.
Shortly after the floor crossing, Strachan recalls how Barnes reacted to the rest of the team playing a gag on him.
“Our hockey team all decided to cross the ice. So as he came off on the shift, we all went over to the other bench,” says Strachan. “He laughed his head off.”
With a general election looming shortly after the Wildrose race ends Saturday, Barnes says he’s optimistic about the party’s prospects.
Asked about forming government, the rookie MLA says the opposition party must rebuild its 87 constituency associations and earn the right to govern.
“People know it’s time for change. They just don’t know if the Wildrose is ready yet,” he adds. “So that will be my goal as”leader — to get the Wildrose ready.”