Election Forum on April 23, 2015

The election forum was extremely interesting this time around since there has been a lot of political unrest in the public.  In the last election, it was quite clear that the PC government was going to take a majority of seats in the Legislature and that the Wildrose Party was breathing heavily over their necks.  This time around, there’s a buzz around change and possibly a minority government after May 5^th.  I enjoyed listening to candidates represent their parties at the forum and I have my opinions about how the evening went.  I’m not sure if others will agree, but this is what I observed.

The biggest surprise of the evening: NDP candidate for GP Smoky, Todd Russell.  He looked the most prepared to address the issues and questions from the audience.  If there was a winner that evening, it would have been Russell, hands down.  Todd was armed with facts that both shocked and awed the crowd that evening.  It was obvious that the audience was filled with his supporters or people that supported his views.  His answers were interrupted by cheers and applause much of the time, which is always a good sign.  The NDP is the only party that has presented a detailed alternative budget and Russell was able to speak to those questions quite confidently.

A close second was Alberta Party candidate for GP Wapiti, Rory Tarant.  Tarant is a city councillor (currently taking a leave of absence) and is well educated about government operations and politics.  He responded quite expertly on the tough questions.  Tarant explained that the Alberta Party will allow him to be the only representative that can act independently for the best interests of the people in the region.  The Alberta Party has made that principle part of its core ideologies.

Coming in third was incumbent MLA for GP Wapiti, Wayne Drysdale.  He was well prepared with his responses with facts and figures and his tone gives the impression that he’s being genuine.  The line of questions for incumbent MLA’s was tough and it was clear that the audience had some criticisms of the proposed budget.  Audience questions on MLA salaries and the proposed budget were answered in detail, although not so well received by the crowd in attendance.

Todd Loewen, Wildrose Candidate for GP Smoky, also handled himself well.  He ran in the previous election and barely lost out in his riding to Everett McDonald.  Loewen is fairly new to politics but was prepared with information from his party and from his personal perspective.  All in all, he had a strong showing that evening.

MLA for GP Smoky, Everett McDonald, would rank about fifth at the election forum for performance.  He is a solid candidate, but some of his answers weren’t very well received by the audience.  In addition, any time questions were posed to both incumbent candidates, he was chosen to answer them second, which put him at a disadvantage.  His attempt to answer questions by stating the party’s position, felt cold at times and didn’t resonate well with non-PC supporters that evening.

Perpetual Liberal candidate for GP Smoky, Kevin McLean, made a decent showing, but didn’t stand out in the crowd.  This is consistent with a party that is losing ground across the province.  Although he made some fairly well founded criticisms of the PC government on various policies and decisions, McLean was likely not able to garner support at this forum.  He also made a somewhat personal attack on one of the candidates that didn’t sit well with the audience.

The last two candidates for GP Wapiti were Laila Goodrich (Wildrose) and Mary Dahr (NDP).  Both these candidates lacked the presence to stand up against their opponents that evening.  Goodrich is young, inexperienced and focused mainly on the Wildrose’s line of “years of mismanagement by the PC government”. Dahr appeared to have difficultly answering the range of questions with any expertise and in my opinion didn’t help the NDP cause.

I’d like to take a moment and congratulate and thank all the candidates for running in the election.  Putting yourself out there is not an easy thing to do and there is a lot of work to do throughout their campaigns.  All the candidates are great people and on a personal level, I wish them all the best.  My opinion of the forum is simply that, just an opinion.  Others may have seen it differently.  I have additional thoughts on the election itself which I hope to be able to write about.