Another would-be Conservative MP for St. Albert-Edmonton has entered the local riding association’s nomination race.
Ryan Hastman, 34, announced his candidacy on Wednesday. Michael Cooper declared his intentions to run for the nomination in October, while at least one more candidate is rumoured but hasn’t officially declared. The candidates are jockeying to replace MP Brent Rathgeber, who left the Tory caucus earlier this year and now sits as an independent.
Hastman is a fund developer at the University of Alberta and is in the process of moving back to St. Albert with his young family, which consists of his wife Lianne and two young boys.
“At the end of it all my motivation is my family and the families of St. Albert,” Hastman said.
Hastman grew up in Edmonton and received a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Alberta. After university he co-founded a web development company, and then went on to work for the Conservative government in various roles, culminating with a spot at the prime minister’s office.
However, he and his wife decided to return to this region to start their family and moved to Edmonton in 2009.
“St. Albert is the geographic centre of our life,” Hastman said.
He’s identified six key issues in his campaign to snag the Conservative nomination. They are: families, small business and jobs, safe communities, taxes, education and community engagement.
On the family side of things, Hastman said he’d be in favour of bumping up the universal child care benefit slightly.
“Taxes, I’m a Conservative. Taxes should always be kept as low as they can,” Hastman said.
He’d like to keep St. Albert and Edmonton portions of the riding safe, and called himself a “law and order conservative.”
Hastman said that having been a small business owner, he knows what the challenges are and how important they are.
Education might not be within federal jurisdiction, but Hastman pointed out the federal government does make investment in public institutional infrastructure and noted that local public schools in St. Albert and Edmonton are known to be excellent, and that’s important to him personally.
“I don’t think enough citizens are engaged in the process,” he said of his community engagement issue. He’s hoping to start engaging voters as he door-knocks while seeking the nomination and after, if he’s successful, noting there’s a lot of room for digital engagement.
Hastman called Cooper and possible candidate Kevin Tam “great guys.” While he didn’t want to compare himself to them, he said he knows what he brings to the table, and that’s business and political experience as well as being a family man.
“I consider myself to be a pragmatic conservative, you know, I’m conservative, certainly, small-c, I would always tend to less spending, lower taxes and less government. But I’m pragmatic about it too, I’m certainly not hard right,” he said.
As for Rathgeber, who the successful candidate will have to face-off with in 2015, Hastman said he respects the current MP but thinks Rathgeber made the wrong decision for the riding.
“I have respect for what he stands for but I don’t think being independent is the most effective way to represent St. Albert-Edmonton,” Hastman said.
If Hastman is selected as the nominee for the Conservative Party in this riding, it wouldn’t be his first time running in a federal election. He ran in Edmonton-Strathcona in 2011 against NDP MP Linda Duncan, but pulling 40.6 per cent of the vote wasn’t good enough to unseat the incumbent.
The date for the nomination meeting has not yet been determined.
