by Colin Smith
During Alberta’s 30th General Election campaign candidate Dale Nally said that if elected he would stand up and fight for all of the Morinville-St.Albert constituency.
Now the newly elected MLA will have his chance.
Nally will be taking his seat in the Alberta Legislative Assembly along with more than sixty United Conservative Party candidates as part of a majority government led by Jason Kenney.
Unofficial results from Elections Alberta, with reports from 92 of 94 polls, indicate that Nally won the riding with 11,998 votes, 51.1 per cent of the total 23,484 votes cast.
New Democrat candidate Natalie Birnie polled second with 7,388 votes, 31.5 per cent, followed by Neil Korotash of the Alberta Party with 3,556, 15.1 per cent. Tanya Krywiak of the Alberta Party, Cass Romyn of the Green Party of Alberta and Mike Van Velzen each received less than one per cent of the votes cast.
The results in Morinville-St. Albert roughly paralleled those in Alberta as a whole, although the Alberta Party did better than it did provincially.
The United Conservative Party received 919,122 votes, 55.2 per cent of the total, electing 63 candidates. The New Democratic Party lead by former premier Rachel Notley was chosen by 536,220 voters, electing 24 candidates. While the Alberta Party under leader Stephen Mandel garnered 152,712 votes, 9.2 per cent, without having a candidate elected.
One per cent of Alberta voters, 16,207, cast their ballots for the Alberta Liberal Party, with each of the rest of the 14 parties that ran candidates in this election and independents receiving less than one per cent.
Prior to the election, Nally, a St. Albert resident, was Senior Director of Learning and Development at Loblaw Companies Ltd. He has also been a spokesman for Canada Post and in the mid-2000s earned his Master of Distance Education degree from Athabasca University in the mid-2000s.
During the campaign Nally identified jobs, the economy and pipelines as the big issues. He said getting people back to work would be a priority, through measures such as a business tax cut and elimination of red tape. He is also an advocate for “educational freedom” through private and faith-based schools.
According to the Elections Alberta results, Nally took the most votes in 79 of the 92 polls in St. Albert-Morinville.
Meanwhile, voters in the neighbouring electoral district of St. Albert elected New Democrat candidate Marie Renaud who received 46.3 per cent of the vote. To defeat UCP candidate Jeff Wedman.
The result bucks a trend that saw the UCP take all the seats outside of Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge, where the NDP had their victories.
In other neighbouring constituencies, the UCP winners were Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk in Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville, Glenn van Dijken in Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock, and Shane Getson in Lac Ste. Anne Parkland.
The NDP won the city ridings bordering Morinville-St. Albert. Successful candidates were Nicole Goerhing in Edmonton-Castle Downs, Heather Sweet in Edmonton-Manning and David Eggen in Edmonton North West.
Pubisher’s Note: Morinville News reached out to MLA elect Dale Nally but had not received a response by deadline.
Let’s get Mr Nally working on getting 642 fixed through town and do it quick it is a disgrace