Leah Hennel, Calgary Herald Alison Redford, right, joins volunteers waving to passing motorists in Calgary as her campaign made a final push for support before Saturday’s vote.
Photograph by: Leah Hennel, Calgary Herald
It is 5 p.m. on Friday, high over central Alberta, and an exhausted Alison Redford and two aides are asleep as a small six-passenger plane brings them back to Calgary.
The race to become leader of the Progressive Conservative party — and Alberta’s 14th premier — started a distant eight months ago, but is finally winding down.
By early Sunday morning, it will be decided in Redford’s favour in a stunning upset.
But, today, the end point is still hours away.
The campaign has evolved into a particularly gruelling round of debates, speeches and hand-shaking events for the three candidates left on the second ballot.
But Redford, the province’s former justice minister, faces not only the physical and mental fatigue of a campaigning politician, but the emotional turmoil of a bereaved daughter.
Just a few days earlier, her mother, Helen, had been rushed to hospital and died unexpectedly that night.
Redford suspended her campaign, except for taking part in a televised debate with Tory opponents Gary Mar and Doug Horner.
Now, she has returned to the trail for the final sprint. Composed but drawn, the strain of recent events still weighs on her.
“I didn’t sleep all night for the first time,” she informed her brash campaign strategist, Stephen Carter, early Friday.
Redford’s long Friday began before 8 a.m., waving to traffic on Elbow Drive with sign-wielding volunteers who had hugged her and shared their condolences as she arrived.
One grey-haired woman jogging with her dog ran past Redford with a hearty “yea, Alison” and gave the candidate advice likely never heard by Mar or Horner. “Alison, no lipstick. Bright eyes,” the jogger told the bemused 46-year-old former human-rights lawyer.
As the day continues, the sun shines and the temperature becomes unseasonably warm in Calgary while Redford runs through a series of media interviews.
But there are also phone calls with family members to discuss funeral arrangements for her mother. When she gets a chance, she talks to her nine-year-old daughter Sarah by cellphone.
At her campaign headquarters, Redford enters smiling, but tears up as her volunteers cheer.
“I didn’t think I was going to be sad,” she muses, later stopping for a moment — overcome — while speaking about her pride in the campaign and its workers.
After spending Friday morning in Calgary, the plan is repeated with media and volunteer events in Edmonton. And that means a flight to the capital city on a Beechcraft King Air B200.
While there have been a few tears, Redford has been poised all day, articulating her message of change in how the Progressive Conservative government operates and a new emphasis on public health and education.
But the mood stays light as the motor-mouthed Carter and Redford’s laconic campaign adviser — and driver — Ryan Barberio banter together.
Waiting for the plane to take off, Carter goes over the Edmonton itinerary.
“I have good news and bad news. The bad news is we didn’t put time in the schedule to eat,” he says.
“What’s the good news?” asks Redford.
“You won’t get fat,” deadpans Carter.
The trio listen to a Punjabi language radio advertisement for Redford that Carter had approved, despite having no idea what was being said.
Despite the humour, there remains an undercurrent of sadness.
When a reporter in Edmonton asks whether her mother’s death was having an impact on the campaign, the candidate acknowledges that it likely has, by showing her strength and mettle.
“I would say it’s made a difference. And it’s a really crappy way for me to get a difference, but the response has been great and we’re going to work hard,” she replies.
With the day’s public events over and the plane droning steadily on the way home to Calgary, Redford drifts off first, Barberio and Carter following suit.
But suddenly, the politician stirs.
And while her aides sleep on, she engages a visitor in a conversation that touches on women in politics and the place of First Nations and Metis people and immigrants in Alberta.
With his skill as a politician, Gary Mar has been in the driver’s seat in the Tory leadership campaign almost from its start.
And Thursday night, Mar’s bright orange campaign bus is in the home stretch, headed north from Calgary to Edmonton.
Mar has just woken up from a brief nap on his improvised bed — a mattress propped up between two sets of bus seats. He is wearing a sweater vest, shirt and causal trousers. His hair is tousled.
Mar quit his job as Alberta’s envoy in Washington, D.C., in March and began campaigning. Since June, his campaign bus has put on almost 37,000 kilometres. There is exhaustion in his eyes and weariness in his voice.
A minute or two after he awakes, Mar launches into a conversation about the merits of a high-speed rail link between Edmonton and Calgary. He talks about how the right-of-ways would work, and the pro and cons.
“I just don’t know if it makes sense economically.”
There are three subjects that Mar knows inside and out: politics, music and food.
And the next day — the last day of the campaign — after media interviews, a fundraising breakfast with developers at the Edmonton Petroleum Club, dim sum is on order for lunch.
Mar, 49, knows a good place in west Edmonton and directs driver Marcel Van Hecke to the location. As the bus pulls up to the restaurant, Mar’s executive assistant Riley Georgsen looks uncomfortable as he peers out the window.
“Do you know the owners here?” he asks.
Georgsen explains there’s a massive Doug Horner campaign sign at the front of the restaurant.
The situation feels a bit awkward, but Mar appears unfazed — he knows the owners and says they’ll put up his signs up, too.
He strides purposefully into the restaurant, where the owner come rushing toward him with a huge “congratulations.”
A Mar sign is up on the window before the party departs.
It’s Friday morning in Calgary and Doug Horner is being ferried between meet-and-greets and media interviews.
The man who will eventually finish third in the Tory leadership race is talking about the lottery and its $40 million jackpot.
Tim Schultz, his longtime friend, former assistant and, on this day, chauffeur, asks whether Horner would continue with the campaign should he win the millions.
The 50-year-old political veteran grins and says he would — just with a nicer car.
In the last few days of the campaign, Horner’s hours have been filled trying to get his face and voice before as many people as possible — especially in Calgary.
On Thursday, night the MLA for Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert works the packed room at swanky Osteria de Medici before heading to his reception for delegates from the Association of Urban Municipalities of Alberta.
The next morning Horner, expecting to cook on Citytv’s Breakfast Television, arrives at the downtown studio at 6:30 a.m., carrying the fixings for bacon and eggs and his specialty hash browns (lots of butter is the secret).
However, he soon finds out only a chat with the host is on the menu.
The rest of his morning is a blur of interviews, with a last-minute addition that sees him racing to southeast Calgary to talk to people attending a leadership summit at the First Alliance Church.
Then, he flies back to Edmonton midday in a supporter’s Beechcraft six-seater, grabbing a double quarter-pounder with cheese at the St. Albert McDonald’s, before greeting people attending prayers at a mosque in Mill Woods.
The marathon day ends with a private dinner with close supporters.
On Saturday morning, a day after their round trip flights, Redford, Carter and Barberio are laughing.
They have just figured out how to link Carter’s iPad into their campaign SUV’s sound system, meaning they finally have their entertainment system ready to go — on the last day of the campaign.
Redford had spent Friday night with her nine-year-old daughter Sarah watching The Devil Wears Prada, and had slept soundly.
Now, as the campaign team hits the road toward Edmonton, a refreshed Redford is in the front passenger seat playing DJ.
She favours a selection of 1960s gold. Every song seems to have some subtext for a candidate seeking votes, especially for an insurgent who thinks an upset might be in the making.
The first tune is For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield, with it’s opening line of “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”
Other songs follow, The Times They Are A- Changin’, Fortunate Son, and Je T’aime.
A grinning Redford swears up and down she isn’t picking the tunes for their implicit messages.
Updates on turnout and demographics trickle in by phone, text and e-mail to Carter.
He lets out an expletive.
“Stephen, you have to come up with a different phrase for good news,” Redford jokingly chides him.
“A different phrase than ‘Holy sh—?’ ” he says.
“Yeah, it’s hard to tell whether it’s good news or not,” says the candidate.
The news that is coming in does seem to be good. “Everything I’m seeing so far says you’re going to win,” Carter says, waiting a beat.
“But it’s early yet,” he adds with a laugh.
As the car moves closer to Edmonton, Redford grows quieter and more pensive.
She acknowledges being a bit superstitious and is trying not to think about the possibility that she’s about to win the province’s top job.
But, Redford says, if she does win, she is ready because the first-term MLA has been clear with voters about her intentions and her personality.
“Alberta today is not the Alberta of 20 years ago,” she says. “We have to have a sophisticated leadership and Albertans want it. Albertans want to feel that the leadership of their province understands how complicated the world is.”
Just 12 hours later in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Redford is on stage at the Edmonton Expo Centre as premier-designate.
She had finished a close second to Mar when the first choice of voters were counted. But with Horner bumped by the preferential ballot system, Redford picked up a majority of his supporters as their second choice, becoming the province’s first female premier.
Mar and Horner take the stage with her.
Despite the devastation of the loss and a pained look in his eyes, Mar fixes a smile on his face and asks the room to make Redford’s victory unanimous.
Horner, looking more relaxed, seconds Mar’s motion. Afterwards, he begins to make his way out of the building, carrying his sleepy young grandson.
Following her speech, Redford faces a crush of reporters for the first time as party leader.
She is asked what her mother would now say to the premier-designate.
“I was sure thinking about her,” Redford says.
“She would probably say what she said to me when I talked to her on Monday — and I didn’t understand why she said it. She said, ‘I want you to know I’ve been thinking about you all day.’ I’m sure she’s thinking about me today.”
The race to become leader of the Progressive Conservative party — and Alberta’s 14th premier — started a distant eight months ago, but is finally winding down.
By early Sunday morning, it will be decided in Redford’s favour in a stunning upset.
But, today, the end point is still hours away.
The campaign has evolved into a particularly gruelling round of debates, speeches and hand-shaking events for the three candidates left on the second ballot.
But Redford, the province’s former justice minister, faces not only the physical and mental fatigue of a campaigning politician, but the emotional turmoil of a bereaved daughter.
Just a few days earlier, her mother, Helen, had been rushed to hospital and died unexpectedly that night.
Redford suspended her campaign, except for taking part in a televised debate with Tory opponents Gary Mar and Doug Horner.
Now, she has returned to the trail for the final sprint. Composed but drawn, the strain of recent events still weighs on her.
“I didn’t sleep all night for the first time,” she informed her brash campaign strategist, Stephen Carter, early Friday.
Redford’s long Friday began before 8 a.m., waving to traffic on Elbow Drive with sign-wielding volunteers who had hugged her and shared their condolences as she arrived.
One grey-haired woman jogging with her dog ran past Redford with a hearty “yea, Alison” and gave the candidate advice likely never heard by Mar or Horner. “Alison, no lipstick. Bright eyes,” the jogger told the bemused 46-year-old former human-rights lawyer.
As the day continues, the sun shines and the temperature becomes unseasonably warm in Calgary while Redford runs through a series of media interviews.
But there are also phone calls with family members to discuss funeral arrangements for her mother. When she gets a chance, she talks to her nine-year-old daughter Sarah by cellphone.
At her campaign headquarters, Redford enters smiling, but tears up as her volunteers cheer.
“I didn’t think I was going to be sad,” she muses, later stopping for a moment — overcome — while speaking about her pride in the campaign and its workers.
After spending Friday morning in Calgary, the plan is repeated with media and volunteer events in Edmonton. And that means a flight to the capital city on a Beechcraft King Air B200.
While there have been a few tears, Redford has been poised all day, articulating her message of change in how the Progressive Conservative government operates and a new emphasis on public health and education.
But the mood stays light as the motor-mouthed Carter and Redford’s laconic campaign adviser — and driver — Ryan Barberio banter together.
Waiting for the plane to take off, Carter goes over the Edmonton itinerary.
“I have good news and bad news. The bad news is we didn’t put time in the schedule to eat,” he says.
“What’s the good news?” asks Redford.
“You won’t get fat,” deadpans Carter.
The trio listen to a Punjabi language radio advertisement for Redford that Carter had approved, despite having no idea what was being said.
Despite the humour, there remains an undercurrent of sadness.
When a reporter in Edmonton asks whether her mother’s death was having an impact on the campaign, the candidate acknowledges that it likely has, by showing her strength and mettle.
“I would say it’s made a difference. And it’s a really crappy way for me to get a difference, but the response has been great and we’re going to work hard,” she replies.
With the day’s public events over and the plane droning steadily on the way home to Calgary, Redford drifts off first, Barberio and Carter following suit.
But suddenly, the politician stirs.
And while her aides sleep on, she engages a visitor in a conversation that touches on women in politics and the place of First Nations and Metis people and immigrants in Alberta.
With his skill as a politician, Gary Mar has been in the driver’s seat in the Tory leadership campaign almost from its start.
And Thursday night, Mar’s bright orange campaign bus is in the home stretch, headed north from Calgary to Edmonton.
Mar has just woken up from a brief nap on his improvised bed — a mattress propped up between two sets of bus seats. He is wearing a sweater vest, shirt and causal trousers. His hair is tousled.
Mar quit his job as Alberta’s envoy in Washington, D.C., in March and began campaigning. Since June, his campaign bus has put on almost 37,000 kilometres. There is exhaustion in his eyes and weariness in his voice.
A minute or two after he awakes, Mar launches into a conversation about the merits of a high-speed rail link between Edmonton and Calgary. He talks about how the right-of-ways would work, and the pro and cons.
“I just don’t know if it makes sense economically.”
There are three subjects that Mar knows inside and out: politics, music and food.
And the next day — the last day of the campaign — after media interviews, a fundraising breakfast with developers at the Edmonton Petroleum Club, dim sum is on order for lunch.
Mar, 49, knows a good place in west Edmonton and directs driver Marcel Van Hecke to the location. As the bus pulls up to the restaurant, Mar’s executive assistant Riley Georgsen looks uncomfortable as he peers out the window.
“Do you know the owners here?” he asks.
Georgsen explains there’s a massive Doug Horner campaign sign at the front of the restaurant.
The situation feels a bit awkward, but Mar appears unfazed — he knows the owners and says they’ll put up his signs up, too.
He strides purposefully into the restaurant, where the owner come rushing toward him with a huge “congratulations.”
A Mar sign is up on the window before the party departs.
It’s Friday morning in Calgary and Doug Horner is being ferried between meet-and-greets and media interviews.
The man who will eventually finish third in the Tory leadership race is talking about the lottery and its $40 million jackpot.
Tim Schultz, his longtime friend, former assistant and, on this day, chauffeur, asks whether Horner would continue with the campaign should he win the millions.
The 50-year-old political veteran grins and says he would — just with a nicer car.
In the last few days of the campaign, Horner’s hours have been filled trying to get his face and voice before as many people as possible — especially in Calgary.
On Thursday, night the MLA for Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert works the packed room at swanky Osteria de Medici before heading to his reception for delegates from the Association of Urban Municipalities of Alberta.
The next morning Horner, expecting to cook on Citytv’s Breakfast Television, arrives at the downtown studio at 6:30 a.m., carrying the fixings for bacon and eggs and his specialty hash browns (lots of butter is the secret).
However, he soon finds out only a chat with the host is on the menu.
The rest of his morning is a blur of interviews, with a last-minute addition that sees him racing to southeast Calgary to talk to people attending a leadership summit at the First Alliance Church.
Then, he flies back to Edmonton midday in a supporter’s Beechcraft six-seater, grabbing a double quarter-pounder with cheese at the St. Albert McDonald’s, before greeting people attending prayers at a mosque in Mill Woods.
The marathon day ends with a private dinner with close supporters.
On Saturday morning, a day after their round trip flights, Redford, Carter and Barberio are laughing.
They have just figured out how to link Carter’s iPad into their campaign SUV’s sound system, meaning they finally have their entertainment system ready to go — on the last day of the campaign.
Redford had spent Friday night with her nine-year-old daughter Sarah watching The Devil Wears Prada, and had slept soundly.
Now, as the campaign team hits the road toward Edmonton, a refreshed Redford is in the front passenger seat playing DJ.
She favours a selection of 1960s gold. Every song seems to have some subtext for a candidate seeking votes, especially for an insurgent who thinks an upset might be in the making.
The first tune is For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield, with it’s opening line of “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”
Other songs follow, The Times They Are A- Changin’, Fortunate Son, and Je T’aime.
A grinning Redford swears up and down she isn’t picking the tunes for their implicit messages.
Updates on turnout and demographics trickle in by phone, text and e-mail to Carter.
He lets out an expletive.
“Stephen, you have to come up with a different phrase for good news,” Redford jokingly chides him.
“A different phrase than ‘Holy sh—?’ ” he says.
“Yeah, it’s hard to tell whether it’s good news or not,” says the candidate.
The news that is coming in does seem to be good. “Everything I’m seeing so far says you’re going to win,” Carter says, waiting a beat.
“But it’s early yet,” he adds with a laugh.
As the car moves closer to Edmonton, Redford grows quieter and more pensive.
She acknowledges being a bit superstitious and is trying not to think about the possibility that she’s about to win the province’s top job.
But, Redford says, if she does win, she is ready because the first-term MLA has been clear with voters about her intentions and her personality.
“Alberta today is not the Alberta of 20 years ago,” she says. “We have to have a sophisticated leadership and Albertans want it. Albertans want to feel that the leadership of their province understands how complicated the world is.”
Just 12 hours later in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Redford is on stage at the Edmonton Expo Centre as premier-designate.
She had finished a close second to Mar when the first choice of voters were counted. But with Horner bumped by the preferential ballot system, Redford picked up a majority of his supporters as their second choice, becoming the province’s first female premier.
Mar and Horner take the stage with her.
Despite the devastation of the loss and a pained look in his eyes, Mar fixes a smile on his face and asks the room to make Redford’s victory unanimous.
Horner, looking more relaxed, seconds Mar’s motion. Afterwards, he begins to make his way out of the building, carrying his sleepy young grandson.
Following her speech, Redford faces a crush of reporters for the first time as party leader.
She is asked what her mother would now say to the premier-designate.
“I was sure thinking about her,” Redford says.
“She would probably say what she said to me when I talked to her on Monday — and I didn’t understand why she said it. She said, ‘I want you to know I’ve been thinking about you all day.’ I’m sure she’s thinking about me today.”
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق