How a Liberal took a lone Calgary riding

George Chahal, the only Liberal member of Parliament elected in Calgary, stormed to victory Monday night after an aggressive on-the-ground campaign that harnessed frustration over the fourth wave of the pandemic.

As the election results came in Monday night, Chahal was in a nail-biter of a race with Jag Sahota, the Conservative incumbent who won the riding in the 2019 federal election when the Conservatives swept all but one of Alberta's 34 ridings.

In the end, Chahal defeated Sahota, who was practically nonexistent on the campaign trail.

“I'm going to commit to working for you just like we did for the last four years in city hall,” Chahal said Monday night, speaking to supporters in a Calgary parking lot.

Chahal's new riding encompasses much of Calgary's Ward 5, which Chahal has represented on city council since 2017, after a career in finance, construction and development.

Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, said Calgary Skyview was always going to be the Liberals' best shot at winning a seat in the province.

“It was a combination of demographics of the riding, the personal appeal of George Chahal and the unpopularity of Jason Kenney — and those were all combined in Chahal's victory,” he said.

A Liberal source, who worked on the Alberta leg of the Liberal campaign, said a previously elected politician brings experience, name recognition and a team of volunteers to the campaign trail.

“If you look at the 2015 Liberal formula to pick up four seats in Alberta, three of them were people who had held elected office very recently in the areas they ran,” the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the campaign, told Postmedia News.

Since the 2019 election, Alberta, which elected no Liberals, has had no representation at the cabinet table, and Chahal's name has been bounced around as a potential for a cabinet position.

Chahal, who received an endorsement from outgoing Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, rode to a victory of a few thousand votes.

“They ran a really strong local campaign and they turned out Liberal voters,” the party source said. “Liberals win seats when we run really strong local campaigns.”

Bratt said Chahal had worked hard for his constituents in the riding and was rewarded for it with something approximating a landslide — “In Alberta, non-Conservative terms,” Bratt said.

Chahal's campaign said he was not doing interviews, and was spending the next couple of days with his family.

Calgary Skyview was one of the ridings the Liberals thought they had a chance in during this election, alongside Edmonton Centre, Calgary Centre and Edmonton Mill Woods.

As of Tuesday, they had taken only Skyview. Liberal Randy Boissonnault was locked in a dead heat with Conservative incumbent James Cumming in Edmonton Centre at press time, while the other candidates were defeated by Conservative incumbents.

Calgary Skyview, a riding that has only existed since 2012, went Liberal in 2015, held by Darshan Kang, who later resigned from the Liberal caucus after a sexual harassment scandal.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, during his sole visit to Alberta on the campaign trail, stopped briefly in Calgary to campaign for Chahal and a group of supporters.

The Liberals stumped in Alberta on the premise that Premier Jason Kenney has been bad for the province, which is in the midst of a devastating fourth wave of the pandemic, and that Erin O'Toole, the Conservative leader, would be just as bad.