Trevor Howell

Mo Elsalhy (l) and Dave Taylor (r) pledge to help newly elected leader David Swann rebuild the Alberta Liberal Party — Swann plans to open the party’s ‘doors and windows’ to be more inclusive

In 1971, Calgary MLA Nick Taylor became leader of the Alberta Liberals. At the time, Pierre Trudeau was prime minister, the word “liberal” was equivalent to mud (or worse) in Alberta, and the party held no seats in the provincial legislature.

It took Taylor 15 years to salvage the party from political purgatory, winning four seats in the 1986 election. Two decades later, David Swann, another Calgary MLA, helms a party saddled with a $475,000 debt load, low membership and an identity crisis.

Swann won the crown for the “toughest job in Canadian politics” on the first ballot, besting Calgary-Currie MLA Dave Taylor and former MLA Mo Elsalhy, with 54 per cent of the vote. A total of 6,258 ballots were sent to party members, 4,599 were returned by the December 12 deadline.

“The doctor is in,” Swann told the 100 or so Liberal faithful who braved – 40 C (with wind chill) temperatures and icy roads to witness the anointment at the Glenmore Inn in Calgary on December 13. Surrounded by family and colleagues, the Calgary-Mountain View MLA pledged to renew the province’s political landscape based on constructive engagement. “I’m tired of old politics, right versus left, rural versus urban, us versus them. This is a no-win game,” he said during his acceptance speech, which was intermittently broken up by raucous supporters who cheered and chanted his name.

Swann says his immediate priority is to spend the next 18 months opening the party’s “doors and windows” to make it more inclusive and reflective of Alberta’s diverse and “centrist” population. Within three years, he hopes to triple the party’s membership to 18,000. Only then will he consider a name change (the Alberta Party being one possibility) to reflect its members and direction.

“I think David has a way of attracting people, and he proved that in this race,” says outgoing leader Kevin Taft, adding the name change idea is worthy of “serious discussion.” Taft says he wants to focus on his constituency of Edmonton-Riverview and wouldn’t rule out running again in three years. Being opposition leader is a job “that can drain you dry,” he says. “I think it’s important to put everything you can into it, but to save a little bit of yourself for your family and for your own life. Otherwise you can lose balance in this position,” he advises his successor.

“I’m as unapologetic today as I was at the start of this campaign about wanting to position this party smack dab in the middle, because that’s where I think the majority of Albertans are,” said Taylor, who had dismissed the notion of reinventing the party during the campaign.

“David (Swann) certainly came into this race from a point that was perceived to be further left than I did, but I think we both met in the middle,” Taylor says, dismissing any notion of a rift between the two. Both he and Elsalhy pledged to work with Swann to rebuild the party.

While Swann’s brand of social activism may attract a number of smaller groups, political scientist Keith Brownsey says pragmatism, not idealism is needed to defeat a “well-oiled Conservative machine.”

“People are worried about jobs, people are worried about income, people are worried about the children,” he says. “Mr. Swann has to address that. Vision is one thing, pragmatic policies are something else.”