A long-time conservative voice and founder of the Wildrose Alliance will seek that party’s nomination in the constituency of Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock.
Last Friday the party announced it had selected candidates in eight ridings and on Thursday would open up nine more to the nomination process.
Link Byfield, former publisher of Alberta Report and one of Alberta’s senators-elect, will seek the nomination in his home riding. He’s hoping to earn the nod and unseat PC incumbent Ken Kowalski, a legislature fixture since 1979.
“They’re all juggernauts around here,” Byfield said of the PC incumbents in his area, which is also close to the riding represented by Doug Horner — Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert.
Byfield, 58, ran in the Whitecourt-Ste. Anne riding in 2008. He wanted to run again but chose his home riding because he knows more people there.
“It actually matters if you know a lot of people in the riding,” he said. “[In Whitecourt,] a lot of people recognized my name but that doesn’t actually doesn’t help all that much.”
Byfield is one of Alberta’s four senators-elect from the 2004 election. He’s perhaps best known as the former publisher of Alberta Report, a conservative news magazine that folded seven years ago. He was at the helm for 18 years.
Since then he’s kept busy with writing, advocacy and helping found the Wildrose Alliance. He stepped down from the party’s executive prior to its annual general meeting in June.
But he thinks the party is a strong advocate for property rights and competition in health care and education.
Kowalski said he does intend to run again and expects to ramp up a campaign starting sometime next year, in preparation for a March 2012 vote that Premier Ed Stelmach has hinted at.
Kowalski downplayed the notion that PC members are leaving the party and flocking to the Wildrose.
“Maybe in some parts of Alberta but I’m not sensing that at all,” he said. “Nobody has raised that question with me anywhere I go.”
He feels his party has done a good job keeping its promises, by keeping taxes low and refusing to bring in a sales tax. He thinks his own fortunes lie with his performance as an MLA and not the overall government.
“I learned a long time ago that you focus on what you’re doing and you do it very, very well and everything will work out,” Kowalski said.
“I work this every day and every week. I go to between three and five constituency events each week and I’ve been doing that since the last election.”
Byfield feels the Tories have passed three bills that have weakened Albertan’s property rights and believes rural voters will remember come election time. He thinks voters will be looking out for the province’s future and thinks anyone on the Stelmach team could be vulnerable, even Kowalski.
“He’s been there a long time and the issue is Stelmach and the government, it’s not him,” Byfield said. “That’s the sense I’m picking up from people all through the riding.”
The piecemeal way in which the Wildrose Alliance is unveiling its candidates is normal because establishing constituencies and candidates prior to an election takes a lot of time and effort, said Chaldeans Mensah, a political scientist at MacEwan University.
“It’s helpful for them to get their candidates in place because they have a difficult sell to the population,” Mensah said. “They’re the new kid on the block, so they have to let people know who these candidates are.”
