Kevin Todd, a two-term Nanton councillor, has entered the provincial election race in Livingstone-Macleod under the Alberta Party.

Todd announced his nomination on social media March 15, roughly a month after he walked away from the United Conservative Party’s nomination contest for the riding.

“The deeper I found myself campaigning for the UCP nomination, the more I became acutely aware that this party no longer represented my values as a conservative,” he wrote in a Feb. 16 campaign post on Facebook. Meeting with Shootin’ the Breeze on Tuesday, Todd refused to be drawn out on the issue.

“I’m not going to dwell on what happened there,” he said. “I was loosely in that race, but I never filed my papers” with the UCP.

Todd, who took a leave from his council duties to pursue his campaign, hopes to make ground with “politically homeless” voters he says are caught between the ideological poles separating the UCP and the Opposition New Democrats.

“Moving forward, we need balance. And, balance comes from the middle,” Todd said, qualifying that he sees himself as “a little right of centre, with conservative values.”

If elected, Todd said he would strive for more transparency from Edmonton and greater autonomy for his constituents in Livingstone-Macleod. He joined the Alberta Party especially because it would allow MLAs to vote according to their conscience, whereas the UCP and NDP whip votes according to their party lines.

More than anything, Todd said, voters want to be heard and appreciated by their elected leaders.

“I won’t always have the right answer, or the answer that [my constituents] want to hear. But I’ll always be approachable,” he told the Breeze. Todd will face the UCP’s Chelsae Petrovic and the NDP’s Kevin Van Tighem when Albertans head to the polls later this spring.

Laurie Tritschler, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Shootin' the Breeze