Familiar faces are popping up in a number of the city’s nomination battles leading up to this spring’s provincial election.
Former MLA Shiraz Shariff is bypassing his busy former riding of Calgary-McCall – which now has 10 candidates lined up for the Progressive Conservative party nomination – in favour of Calgary-West, where he’ll only face three Tory candidates (including former AHS board boss Ken Hughes).
Calgary-West will be vacated when Finance Minister Ron Liepert retires from politics this spring. Shariff is looking for a move, and says he’s also moving his family into Calgary-West, after losing Calgary-McCall to Alberta Liberal Darshan Kang in the 2008 election.
And former Calgary-Elbow Liberal MLA Craig Cheffins is seeking his party’s nomination in Calgary-Glenmore — a riding where the struggling official Opposition party has a chance against the Wildrose and Tories, but have been without a candidate up until this week.
Cheffins won the Calgary-Elbow byelection to replace Ralph Klein in 2007, but was unseated in the general election one year later by none other than Premier Alison Redford, then a political neophyte. Nonetheless, the Liberals view him as a strong candidate.
The premier’s southern Alberta spokeswoman Sandra Jansen — a former TV anchor who also worked on Redford’s leadership campaign — announced on Twitter she’s seeking the nomination in Calgary-North West. In a surprise move last week, incumbent Lindsay Blackett announced he would not be running there again. http://goo.gl/oumy8
Also “kicking the tires” in Calgary-North West is management consultant Chris Harper, who unsuccessfully ran against incumbent Ald. Dale Hodges in Ward 1 during the 2010 municipal election. But before formally seeking the nomination, Harper told the Herald he wants to think for a few days about how his run will affect his work with a number of non-profit boards in the city.
