UCP candidate Dale Nally said he is humbled and honoured to win another term in the Morinville-St. Albert riding.
“Thank you for the opportunity to serve you for another four years,” he said in an early morning “fuzzy slippers” interview with the Gazette.
Nally, who served as Service Alberta and red-tape reduction minister since October, took 51 per cent of the vote in a tight race against NDP candidate Karen Shaw, who got 46 per cent of the vote.
“It was definitely a close race — I actually thought it was going to be closer. When you looked at all the polls, the polls said it was going to be much closer than that,” he said.
There were 26,158 valid votes cast in the riding, according to unofficial results from Elections Alberta, with Nally gleaning 13,466, Shaw getting 11,872, Alberta Party candidate Wayne Rufiange receiving 590, and Green Party candidate Kurt Klingbeil taking 230 votes.
The last general election in Alberta was in April 2019. Nally won that time with roughly the same number of votes (13,435) for 50 per cent, defeating NDP candidate Natalie Birnie, who received 8,908 votes, or 33.2 per cent.
“This has been a rough four years, and to have approximately the same amount of people support me in 2023 as they did in 2019, I take that as a positive gesture,” he said. “I was quite taken in a positive way that that the numbers were very similar … I was quite honoured.”
Nally said though he interprets the support as a good sign, he will be drilling down on the data to see what it tells him about geographical differences throughout the polls.
“I really want to do that analysis and drill down to see what it says, so I'm looking forward to doing that,” he said.
Overall, Nally said he is proud of the job his team did this election.
“We ran a hard-fought race, but it was a clean one. We attacked our opponents’ policies, but not them personally. That's exactly the kind of race that I asked my team to run. And that's exactly the kind of race that we ran.
“It's the kind of race that I could talk to my children about,” he said.
Nally said his door is always open to people who would have preferred a different result, if they want to talk.
“In politics, we're opponents, but we're not enemies. And just because you didn't vote for me doesn't mean that I don't represent you, and it doesn't mean that I can't support you in other ways,” he said.
As for his next steps, Nally said he will be taking a few days off, as this has been a long campaign.
“I remember knocking on doors in December when it was 20 below and it gets dark at five o'clock. And we're standing there in the cold with a flashlight trying to read pulling sheets.
"So, I am going to take a couple of days off to spend with my family.”
