Greg Clark pushes Alberta Party message over beers at pub night
The Alberta Party hoped a pub night would help bring in voters who are looking for a new political home.
Alberta Party leader and MLA Greg Clark greeted curious Calgarians at an event Thursday night dubbed "Centre Together Get Together." It's the second such event, with the first held recently in Edmonton.
Kevin Brent came to see what the party was all about.
"I think that the parties to the right are skewing too far right, and the party that is governing is too far left, so there's this big gap in the middle," he told CBC News.
Amanda Kramar says she had a conservative upbringing, but feels distanced from Alberta's Progressive Conservative party, whose new leader is looking to merge the party with the Wildrose Party.
"With what's happening, I just feel that progressiveness is disappearing," she said. "I have been disillusioned. I always vote but I have been throwing away my ballot a lot of the time."
Comments like those are exactly what Clark is hoping will help his party gain traction.
"Albertans care about their neighbours, but they also care about the economy, they care about jobs, they care about entrepreneurship. They want both and they can have both, and that's the message the Alberta Party is here to deliver," he said.
Clark told the crowd that the one thing that separates his party from Alberta's Liberal Party — another party with only one member in the legislature — is an effort to have candidates in all 87 ridings for the 2019 election.
The Liberal Party remains in limbo after the only candidate in the campaign dropped out, two days before the nomination deadline in its leadership contest. David Swann has been the party's interim leader for the past two years.
Both parties are sending representatives to a meeting in Red Deer next month to discuss uniting the political centre, an effort involving former Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel.
