Wildrose floor-crosser MLA Jeff Wilson defeated four other candidates to win the Progressive Conservative nomination in Calgary-Shaw on March 21, 2015.
At 9:25 a.m. on March 21, only hours before the nomination vote took place, the PC Party circulated an email notice announcing that “PC Alberta has disallowed Trudy Hauser and Mark Dyrholm from the Calgary-Shaw Candidate Nomination.”
Almost two hours later, at 11:19 a.m., party communications manager Bryce Forbes sent out another email stating the first email was a mistake. “As part of the vetting process, we lay out multiple different scenarios,” Mr. Forbes wrote in the email. It is not known what other scenario draft statements have been sitting in Mr. Forbes email waiting to be released or why this draft was even written. Were the PCs planning to disqualify these two candidates?
Although they were running for the PC nomination in this election, Mr. Dyrholm was a 2009 Wildrose Party leadership candidate and Ms. Hauser was briefly nominated as a Wildrose candidate in Banff-Cochrane before the 2012 election.
It is not clear whether the originally circulated disqualification email caused any PC Party members in Calgary-Shaw to change their vote or to stay home.
Party interference and controversy in other constituency nomination contests across Alberta has triggered frustration among some long-time PC Party members.
