Edmonton-Glenora candidates gear up for election

By Elizabeth Walters

EDMONTON — The new Alberta Party, the NDP and the Liberals have nominated candidates to take on Conservative incumbent Heather Klimchuk in Edmonton-Glenora when the next provincial election is called.

Glenora has always been a bit of a wild card, and parties are already working towards the next election, expected in the spring.

Sue Huff, the candidate for the Alberta Party, served from 2007 to 2010 on the Edmonton Public School Board, where she encouraged transparency.

She now hopes to bring the same values to provincial politics.

“What people are really looking for is much more responsive government,” said Huff.

“A government that listens to them, that evaluates all perspectives and really moves forward with the very best ideas, not just necessarily the idea that fits with their party’s ideology or dogma.”

She chose the Alberta Party because it has “an openness and a willingness to listen to different points of view and not be threatened by those, to see them as a gift, to see them as something that would strengthen our thinking.”

The party also allows card-carrying members of other parties to join in policy-making in the hope that all Albertans will get involved.

“There’s a huge disconnect between politicians and the public, and that’s not really one party or another — that’s just something that’s happened, I think, over many, many years,” said Huff.

“That’s the thing that I really want to work on. I want people to know who I am, I want them to feel that they can connect with me, that I will be honest, and that I will act with integrity at all times.”

Huff said that if she were to be elected, she would “make the processes open and transparent, make sure that people knew what was happening and that it was always a two-way dialogue, that it wasn’t just me offloading information, that I was always gathering as much information as I was giving out and that people felt that I was truly there to represent them, not to represent my party.”

Another candidate going up against Klimchuk is NDP nominee Ray Martin, who hopes that his experience as an opposition leader will help him win votes in Glenora.

“We’ve never held Glenora, but we’ve always had a fairly strong vote and came close, especially when Larry Booi ran, so we think it’s a priority riding for us,” Martin said, referring to the former Alberta Teachers’ Association president’s second-place finish in 2004.

With 14 years experience in the Alberta Legislature, Martin feels there are two things an MLA should focus on.

“One is the work that you do in terms of policy,” he said. “I will be advocating NDP positions on issues such as education, health care and all those major issues that people in Edmonton, and specifically Glenora, care about.”

The other is a focus on the constituency level.

“You have to have what I call a ‘community office,’ ” Martin said. “We’ve been very successful in the past in doing that in the ridings I’ve represented, so those are the two basic things every MLA should do and do well.”

Martin’s office would ensure that he would be available to help with any issues Glenora constituents may be facing.

“I have a social democratic point of view about what’s happening in the province; I’m tired of one-party rule, I’m tired of this conservative ideology,” Martin said.

“In a democracy we need to hear from all points of view, and politics should never be personal. It should be a debate about various ways to confront some of the social problems that we face, and obviously as an NDP member I have a certain perspective, and with my experience I can advocate that very well.”

Glenora is an interesting riding because it doesn’t vote the same way every time, said political blogger Dave Cournoyer.

“For a long time, it was a traditional Tory stronghold, and then it moved over to the Liberals, when Howard Sapers won in the early ’90s,” He said. “Since then, it’s kind of ping-ponged back and forth between the Liberals and the Conservatives, with the NDP doing fairly well in a couple of elections, most notably in 2004 when Larry Booi ran for the NDP.”

Booi lost to Liberal Bruce Miller, who was nominated as a candidate for the Liberal Party on Oct. 15. (Watch West Edmonton Local for a follow-up story on his candidacy.) The Wildrose Party candidate has yet to be nominated.

Cournoyer said the election could be called as early as February. Premier Alison Redford has said she won’t call it until after the 2012 budget, which would act as the Tories’ election platform.

Klimchuk, who won Edmonton-Glenora in 2008, was the minister responsible for Service Alberta before Redford shuffled the cabinet and made her minister of culture and community services.