Still a guessing game as to who will challenge Motz

By COLLIN GALLANT on August 17, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

The ballot for voters in Medicine Hat-Cardston-Warner still have a few blank spaces heading toward the Sept. 20 election, with no word of when two major national parties will name local candidates.

Incumbent candidate Glen Motz held the Conservative Party nomination as a virtue of holding the seat he first won in 2015 byelection.

Two other right-of-centre candidates will vie for the seat, but there is no word, or even easy way to contact, the Liberals, New Democrats and Green Party about local candidates.

The deadline to become a candidate is Aug. 30, with final lists released on Sept. 1.

Walsh, Alta., businessman Geoff Shoesmith has said he will run under the banner of the Maverick Party, which says it will form a Western voting block.

Current People’s Party candidate Brodie Heidinger hosted national leader, Maxime Bernier, in southern Alberta tour in late July.

In the last general election, Motz collected about 80 per cent of the vote in the local riding, finishing well ahead of second place finisher Elizabeth Thomson (New Democrat), who now lives in Edmonton.

Similarly, former Hatter Shannon Hawthorne, who ran locally for the Greens in 2019, now lives in British Columbia.

Harris Kirshenbaum, a Liberal Party supporter who campaigned locally in 2019 while living in Calgary, implied to the News he would not run again.

Independent candidate Dave Phillips also was on the ballot, but publicly announced he supported the PPC candidate, Andrew Nelson.

This year in Alberta, 32 of the CPC’s 33 MPs for the province were acclaimed as candidates leading up to the election. Ft. McMurray MP David Yurdiga announced he would not seek reelection last week, and will be replaced as the CPC candidate by Laila Goodridge, currently the United Conservative Party MLA in the area. She resigned her provincial post Sunday, meaning a byelection would need to be held by the end of March next year.

Federal Liberal nominations over the weekend covered five ridings in Calgary, Red Deer and the Foothills riding southwest of Calgary.

The national New Democrats have only nominated two candidates in Alberta, both in Edmonton, in incumbent Heather Sweet and Métis advocate Blake Desjarlais.

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