Alberta's NDP carried its orange crush momentum throughout the May 5 election as was predicted in the polls, and with a 53 seat majority, the party managed to unseat the nearly 44-year-old Progressive Conservative dynasty.
However, locally, David Hanson became the Wildrose MLA, capturing nearly 39 per cent of the vote, to make Hanson, along with 20 other Wildrosers, the Official Opposition. Several voters demonstrated their disenchantment with the PC government, relegating the party to third place in the Lac La Biche-St. Paul-Two Hills riding.
“This is a life-changing moment for sure,” said an elated David Hanson last Tuesday night, who gave credit to his wife Donna – the First Lady of Owlseye, as he joked – for her support in the campaign, as well as several others.
“The support has been fantastic,” he said during the victory celebration, held on election night at the Centennial Senior Citizens’ Centre.
As for the NDP majority, Hanson voiced his surprise, saying, “I never thought I'd see that in my lifetime.” But in his experience talking to constituents, he said people were mad at the Progressive Conservative government and it showed in the NDP’s massive gain at the PC’s cost, with the former government reduced from 70 seats at the call of the election to 10 seats. (One seat was tied between the PCs and the NDP, and has been subject to a recount).
However, Hanson said he was not concerned about the NDP majority and said he would carry on with the Wildrose platform of opposing tax increases and working on curbing spending “to get the province back on its feet.”
While Hanson won the local riding, NDP candidate Catherine Harder, a recent university graduate from Camrose, surprised people by coming in second, capturing 34 per cent of the vote.
“Everywhere we went to, the orange wave followed us,” said former NDP MLA Leo Piquette, who campaigned for Harder and for his son, Colin, who ended up winning the Athabasca-Sturgeon-Redwater riding for the NDP.
Since Harder was finishing university final exams and papers, she only had four days in the riding, but in that time, she and her supporters covered the constituency, planted their signs, and spoke to people on the street.
First Nations and Metis people seemed to rally around the NDP, with Saddle Lake, Goodfish Lake and Kikino and Buffalo Lake Metis Settlements’ polls showing majority support for the NDP.
“We spoke to some key people, and they said they would spread the word, and they did,” said Piquette. “It was an amazing campaign.”
He decried the fear-mongering and scare tactics that suggested the NDP would kill jobs or would affect businesses and prevent them from supporting charities, saying it was an attack that failed.
“Communication between industry and Notley will be positive,” he said, pointing to the party’s dedication to look at creating jobs, adding incentives to do more upgrading of oil in Alberta, and to keep taxes reasonable for 90 per cent of the population, while only the top 10 per cent of income earners would pay more.
As for the NDP’s proposal to have a commission to look at royalties, Piquette says the goal is to create a transparent process that decides a fair rate for resources for all Albertans, and notes “there’s been a lot of money left on the table.” Royalty rates will not change while oil prices remain low, Notley has said.
“You’re going to see a very intelligent government,” Piquette promised.
However, some locals were not convinced and PC candidate Darrell Younghans was one of those expressing some reservations about the province’s future.
“As much as it hurts to lose this riding, I am sitting here fretting about the next four years in this province with an NDP government. I heard it said once that the worst thing about socialism is eventually you run out of somebody else’s money and that scares me,” he said, adding that he believed Hanson’s job would be “awful tough with a NDP government.”
He also expressed some doubt about the NDP's ability to run the province, especially given the youth and inexperience of some of its newly elected MLAs.
“I am not saying there are not some 20-year-olds that can definitely do the job but overall it is going to be absolutely mind-boggling to them to try to manage the budget,” Younghans said.
However, Hanson said he was ready to work with the new government, saying, “We'll have to work together to run the province.”
The mood at the Wildrose celebration party was upbeat, given the NDP win, with several people expressing gladness that the PCs were turfed.
“In four years, they can't do as much damage as the PCs have,” said Wildrose supporter Richard Creelman regarding the NDP.
“Give it a couple years, and I think we’ll be surprised by what the NDP will do,” he added. “Our health care is saved, our schools are saved.”
Others gave credit to Notley for the campaign she ran, with Gerard Bergeron saying of Notley, “I think she earned it. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due – she was a champion.”
The PCs had long given off a sense of entitlement, of the belief in ownership of the province, said Bergeron, an assessment with which more than one person in the Wildrose camp agreed.
Whatever the cause of the mass defection of voters from the PC camp, the disbelief and devastation was felt in equal measures by their candidates.
Younghans expressed his disappointment to have finished behind a candidate who wasn’t from the area and had only visited the area a couple of times, even after his extensive campaigning efforts.
“You kind of have to really wonder what it is that would make the voters shift to someone that doesn’t really know of the constituency and isn’t even here in the constituency tonight. If it was a protest vote, whatever it was, it was disappointing.”
However, he said he felt he fell flat during the forum in St. Paul and had been physically and mentally drained from a long-running nomination process, followed by the exhausting election campaign.
“But I was proud of the team and what we did,” he said, adding it was a clean campaign. “In the end, we can hold our heads up high.”
