In leadership race, UCP heartland runs down these gravel roads and back highways

Far from the Legislature in Edmonton, far from the office towers in Calgary, are the grain fields, cattle pastures and oil pumpjacks whose stewards will determine the next United Conservative Party leader and Alberta premier.

As they seek a candidate to replace Jason Kenney, they're looking for someone who will safeguard their personal liberties and push back harder against Ottawa. If urban Albertans want to know why the focus and rhetoric of the UCP's leadership race has barely covered other issues, the answer's out here.

Rural and small-town Albertans hold the lion's share of UCP members who get to vote for party leader. Two districts, containing Rimbey, in central Alberta, and Cardston, in the province's deep south, have more than twice as many United Conservatives as the provincial average.

The conservative heartland voted overwhelmingly for Kenney's party in 2019, but then growing distrust prompted rural Alberta to help oust him. The UCP's next leader will need to restore these regions' trust, and then somehow hang onto it.

There's a sense among members in these ridings of being misunderstood by urban Albertans and the rest of the country. Often, they said, there's not even a sense their own provincial government understands what keeps them up at night. 

Rimbey has a special place in Alberta's conservative mythology. Former premier Ralph Klein was fond of saying the town was Alberta's archetypal community — it wasn't an issue, he'd say, unless "Martha and Henry" from Rimbey cared.

And while talk of COVID-19 may be shifting into past tense in society's lexicon, it's still a common issue among UCP members in these areas. The economic impacts, the societal fallout and the restrictions imposed by the provincial and federal governments in an effort to staunch the virus's spread are all motivating votes in this leadership race.

In and around Rimbey, the town of 2,500 about 60 kilometres northwest of Red Deer, conservatives harbour lingering resentment about the province's COVID rules. Vaccination rates there are the lowest in central Alberta, about 20 percentage points behind the provincial average.

There's distrust in the science. Mathew Jaycox, a former town councillor in Rimbey, calls it a "plandemic" designed in part to bolster the pharmaceutical industry. There was casual defiance of public health measures, like masking and limited social gatherings. 

"Everybody thought we did, but we didn't," said Pieter Broere, who runs the internet provider for the neighbouring hamlet of Bluffton. "We knew the rules, but nothing was convincing that we should go by all those rules." 

It's a sore subject, even among those who adhered to many of the adjustments during the pandemic. The attitudes — and vaccination rates — are similar around Cardston, which some consider the province's Bible Belt.

"I know people that almost died from COVID, so it wasn't that we didn't believe that COVID wasn't real. It was a factor, but did we go overboard?" said Brad Beazer, an insurance broker and rancher in Cardston.

Many people he knows followed the restrictions and got vaccinated but felt sour about not having a choice. That's why, he said, leadership candidates' pledges to never impose restrictions again are resonating in his community — even though he says that's a tough promise to keep. 

In southern Alberta, signs of political tensions — between new and old — dot the landscape.