EDMONTON — Like weary but determined runners hitting the wall in a marathon, the remaining three candidates in Alberta’s Tory leadership race are digging deep for the final dash to replace Premier Ed Stelmach.
Front-runner Gary Mar and his team were strategizing Monday as volunteers worked the phones to try to grow his share of a second vote Oct. 1 in Edmonton. Mar’s message is that with strong support across the province, he is the best candidate to unite a party divided by an eight-month-long campaign.
Alison Redford said she was working to build on the momentum of her second-place finish and hoped to win new supporters, including the candidates no longer in the race.
“We are building networks, reaching out to people, social media, conventional communications,” Redford said from her Calgary campaign headquarters.
“It is going to be everything we did in the last eight months condensed into two weeks.”
Doug Horner, who came in third in Saturday’s initial balloting, posted a video on his website thanking his volunteers. His team was also working to increase voter turnout in the next round, especially in rural and northern areas.
Horner said for some reason many of his supporters didn’t bother to go to the polls even though his campaign team has veteran Progressive Conservative members from rural ridings, including legislature Speaker Ken Kowalski.
It was Kowalski and a similar group of rural legislature members who helped broker former premier Ralph Klein’s leadership victory in 1991.
Horner scoffed at suggestions that some in the party want him to voluntarily quit to make it a two-candidate race.
“The reality is a lot of my vote did not come to the polls and I remain confident that we are going to be able to bring a lot bigger numbers out on the next vote,” Horner said from Edmonton.
“My volunteers have told me loud and clear that they want me to see it through to the end, and that is exactly what I want to do.”