EDMONTON — Alison Redford has won the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership race and will be the province’s next premier.
Redford, 46, was justice minister in Ed Stelmach’s government and will be the first woman to sit in the premier’s chair in Alberta.
Her win comes after eight months of campaigning to replace Stelmach.
She beat out former health minister Gary Mar and former deputy premier Doug Horner on the final ballot.
In the days before Saturday’s final round of voting, tragedy struck when Redford’s 71-year-old mother Helen died of an infection in hospital in Calgary. But Redford soldiered on through her grief, participating in a televised debate the following night.
She now faces the substantial task of revitalizing a party that has seen its right flank hived off, to a certain degree, by the rival Wildrose party.
Under Stelmach, three members of the Tory caucus crossed the floor to join leader Danielle Smith’s party, and if recent polls prove accurate, the Wildrose will take a bite out of the Tories in the next election.
The Tories don’t have to go to the polls again until March 2013, but a general election is expected either this fall or next spring.
Redford was born on March 7, 1965 in Kitimat, a coastal town in northern British Columbia, and moved to Calgary at an early age.
She holds a law degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
She worked as an official in the office of then prime minister Brian Mulroney in the 1980s, and in the 1990s returned to Calgary to work as a lawyer.
Her work took her to some of the world’s most desperate places as she tried to bring about judicial and democratic reforms. In 2005 she was part of a United Nations team that supervised elections in Afghanistan.
Redford is relatively new to elected life, first winning a seat in the legislature in 2008. She won Ralph Klein’s old Calgary-Elbow riding and Stelmach immediately put her into cabinet as justice minister.
Redford ran a controversial leadership campaign that, at times, focused on running against Stelmach’s record. She promised to hold a full, independent inquiry into allegations that doctors have been coerced to keep quiet about fundamental flaws and avoidable patient deaths in the health system.
She also promised to restore more than $100 million in education cuts and to reform a government that she says has become too top-down in decision making.