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The AM signal from Calgary’s Newstalk Radio CHQR stretches across the Prairies as far east as Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. And that’s how, driving into the sunset towards Alberta on the evening of its recent election, I first experienced the end of that province’s four-year experiment with being governed by hard left politicians. As the evening broadcasts wore on, all the old shibboleths were rolled out by both pundits and partisans. I switched back and forth between CBC radio where former federal Conservative cabinet minister Monte Solberg bravely maintained against others more skeptical that a victory by Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party (UCP) he leads was unlikely to result in a wave of socially conservative pogroms, and CHQR, which was broadcasting Global’s television coverage. Global/Corus, which has taken on a bias even more progressive than that of which the CBC is commonly accused, was for a while gravely concerned with the campaign impact of Mark Smith, the UCP candidate in Drayton Valley-Devon. Smith had given a sermon a few years ago before entering politics in which he made unfavourable comments – to pews filled with Baptists if you can imagine – regarding gay love. The comments were described by blogger David Climenhaga as having been delivered in a “smug preacher’s voice.” Corus’s Ryan Jespersen, a Trinity Western graduate, seemed particularly convinced Smith’s comments were reflective of a widespread, irrational fear harboured against the LBGTQ community by people considering voting UCP. Others such as Danielle Smith, a former newspaper colleague and once leader of the Wildrose Party, eyed the possibility of vote-splitting due to the presence of Derek Fildebrandt’s narcissistic Freedom Conservative Party, and/or separatist party candidates. Mount Royal University’s Duane Bratt, seemingly the only political scientist worth consulting by media in Alberta, noted that none should assume the marriage of Wildrose and the old Progressive Conservative (PC) party would hold fast. One plus one doesn’t always equal two, he said, noting that 1.8 would still likely work out well for UCP. Related Stories Losing Our Faith in Political History NDP Landslide a Family Story After the Flood

People go to Alberta because they are looking for a place where they will be free to succeed regardless of which side of the tracks they grew up upon, which school they went to, what their daddy’s name is or which house of worship they attend.

Another question to be answered was whether the Alberta Party would find favour with former PCs uncomfortable in the company of Kenney Conservatives, and with Liberals too sensible to join the majority of their colleagues in supporting the NDP and Premier Rachel Notley’s socialism. And finally, as pundits had noted throughout the campaign, the big test would be whether Albertans, whom most agreed had shown dubious levels of social sophistication prior to Notley’s election, could possibly return to their troubling former ways. After all, no governing party in Alberta history had failed in its first effort to be re-elected. And Notley’s election, according to the accepted newsroom verities of the day, was a sign that Alberta had changed; that all those interprovincial migrants from the East had at last infused it with the liberal-progressive values commonly associated with the educated and urbane. As it turned out: One plus one did not equal 1.8 or even two. It equaled closer to 2.2.

Mark Smith got more than 18,000 votes, almost 14,000 more than his nearest rival.

Fildebrandt and his odd Libertarianism got less than 1,700 votes in his riding, about half that of the NDP candidate. UCP Deputy Leader Leela Aheer won with 15,000 votes.

Overall, UCP won 63 seats to the NDP’s 24. No other parties had a candidate elected.

Notley’s hometown of Edmonton remained almost entirely orange, the one hint of the UCP’s feared harbouring of white supremacists being the election of its candidate in Edmonton South-West: Kaycee Madu, a Nigerian immigrant. In other words, Alberta’s historic political aesthetic was restored, hopefully without the suffocating hubris and entitled cronyism that blew it apart and brought an end to 44 years of PC rule in 2015. Which leaves us to wonder what became of the vaunted influence of the young, urbane interprovincial migrants that so many were convinced had, through their wise counsel, changed Alberta forever?

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