Calgary-Shaw by-election race heats up as Rebecca Schulz expected to resign any day now
City Councillor Dan McLean, Mike Derry, and Stewart Jeanes running for UCP nomination
It was one of the worst kept secrets in Calgary political circles that City Councillor Dan McLean was planning to jump into provincial politics and he is now running for United Conservative Party nomination in Calgary-Shaw.
The southwest Calgary riding is expected to become vacant when UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz, who resigned from cabinet last December, steps down as an MLA. Schulz delivered a farewell statement in the Legislature last week and shared a video on social media thanking voters in the riding for choosing her to represent them for the past seven years.
Schulz was first elected in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 56.3 per cent of the vote. She served in cabinet as Minister of Children and Youth Services, Minister of Municipal Affairs, and then Minister of Environment. She finished fourth in the 2022 UCP leadership race.
Popular in conservative circles, Schulz hosted annual “Politics & Prosecco” fundraisers for women UCP candidates in Calgary and Edmonton and was a frequent speaker at the annual Canada Strong & Free conference in Ottawa.
McLean ran against Schulz for the UCP nomination in October 2018 and has maintained close public ties with the provincial party ever since. He was first elected to city council in 2021 by defeating long-time councillor Diane Colley-Urquhart in a landslide.
He was spotted door-knocking in the riding this weekend with former city councillor Sonya Sharp.
Well-known conservative agitator Craig Chandler launched a pre-emptive campaign against McLean last month calling for him to stay out of the race and complete the four-year city council term he was re-elected to last October. Chandler is supporting Mike Derry’s candidacy for the UCP nomination.
Derry posted an endorsement from former Progressive Conservative MLA Art Johnston on his Facebook page last week. Johnston was the MLA for Calgary-Hays from 2004 to 2012.
Stewart Jeanes is also running for the UCP nomination.
The UCP opened nominations in the riding on May 15 with an application deadline on May 29. That means the nomination vote will be held sometime between June 19 and 29.
The riding has been represented by conservative party MLAs since its creation in 1986 with the sole exception of NDP MLA Graham Sucha, who represented the riding from 2015 to 2019.
Calgary-Shaw was one of the NDP’s strongest voter growth ridings in the 2023 election, with candidate David Cloutier increasing the NDP’s vote by 17.09 points over 2019. The NDP have not yet announced a candidate nomination meeting ahead of the by-election.
By-election during a separation referendum and voters list privacy breach
If called within the next six months, the Calgary-Shaw by-election will be held during or near an expected referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada and amidst the largest privacy breach of personal information in Canadian history.
The public searchable database app that the separatist Centurion Project allegedly uploaded the names and home addresses of 2.9 million Albertans on the official voters has recently been revealed to have connections to United States Ambassador Pete Hoekstra. Elections Alberta admitted last week that thousands of people might have had access to the voters list uploaded to the app.
Other UCP nomination updates include:
Sunday Adeleye is running for a UCP nomination in Airdrie, though he has not specified which riding.
Adeleye is a Power Engineer with Alta Gas and is the Chief Financial Officer of the UCP Airdrie-Cochrane constituency association. He ran for Airdrie City Council in 2021.
Engineer Connor Hall is running for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Edgemont.
The riding is currently represented by NDP MLA Julia Hayter.
Former Wildrose Independence Party leader Jeevan Mangat is running for UCP nomination in Calgary-Acadia.
Mangat was the Wildrose Party candidate in Calgary-Fort in the 2012 and 2015 elections and ran for the Wildrose Independence Party against Danielle Smith in the Brooks-Medicine Hat by-election in 2022 and in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake in the 2023 general election.
Mangat was part of the group that wrestled control of the small separatist right-wing party away from former leader Paul Hinman in 2022. Hinman was the former leader of the Alberta Alliance and Wildrose Alliance parties in the 2000s and was succeed by Danielle Smith in 2009.
He was a spokesperson for the Rally for Alberta Independence that took place at the Legislature in March 2025.
Mavy Mangat is running for a UCP nomination in “Cochrane and area” as it remains unclear what riding Cochrane will be located in when the next election is called.
Mangat is an Associate with Scott Venturo Rudakoff LLP and ran for the federal Conservative Party nomination in Calgary Skyview in 2025.
Isaac Nibourg is running for the UCP nomination in Drumheller-Stettler.
“I hope to fight for our rural, conservative way of life, for our Christian Values, and for a return to normal Common-Sense principles,” Nibourg wrote on his campaign website.
Nibourg’s candidacy lends credibility to the well-circulated rumour that incumbent UCP MLA and Minister of Finance Nate Horner will not seek re-election.
Horner has represented the sprawling rural riding since 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 82.1 per cent of the vote. He first won the party’s nomination in 2019 by defeating incumbent UCP MLA Rick Strankman.
Alberta election candidates tracking list launched
Longtime Daveberta readers will be familiar with my tracking lists of party nomination and election candidates ahead of provincial elections.
I had planned to launch this list of nomination candidates when the Electoral Boundaries Commission final report was supposed to have been adopted this spring, but with the UCP tossing out the commission’s final report and appointing its own MLA committee to redraw the new riding map, I’ve decided not to wait.
I will update the list when we find out what the new riding map looks like later this year.
NDP MLA Janis Irwin running for re-election in Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood
Popular MLA Janis Irwin is running for re-election and was nominated as the Alberta NDP candidate in Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood on May 3. The second-term MLA is the NDP’s housing critic and is a crowd favourite among Daveberta readers who for six years in a row have voted her Alberta’s Best MLA.
Irwin was first elected in the central Edmonton NDP stronghold in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 71.4 per cent of the vote. Parts of the Highlands-Norwood riding in its various configurations over the decades have been represented by NDP MLAs in all but four years since 1982.
The Edmonton-Highlands riding was represented by NDP leaders Pam Barrett (from 1986 to 1993 and 1997 to 2000) and Brian Mason (from 2000 to 2004), and the former Edmonton-Norwood riding was represented by NDP leader Ray Martin from 1982 to 1993.
Other NDP nomination updates include:
The NDP have recently nominated incumbent Janet Eremenko in Calgary-Currie.
Eremenko was first elected in 2023 by defeating UCP MLA Nicholas Milliken.
The NDP are scheduled to nominate MLAs Kyle Kasawski in Sherwood Park on May 23, Rob Miyashiro in Lethbridge-West on May 23, Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse in Edmonton-Rutherford on May 27, Diana Batten in Calgary-Acadia on May 29, and Amanda Chapman in Calgary-Beddington.
Cabinet shuffle rumoured soon
With the Legislative spring session ended, there is plenty of speculation that a major cabinet shuffle could happen this week. The changes in this shuffle are expected to reflect which ministers are planning to run for re-election in 2027, with retiring ministers leaving cabinet or moving to more junior positions and MLAs running for re-election appointed to more senior roles.
One of the biggest rumours that has been circulating for weeks is that Nate Horner will step down as Minister of Finance and be replaced by Jason Nixon, who currently serves as Minister of Assisted Living and Social Services.
Nixon briefly filled the finance role from June 2022 to October 2022 after Travis Toews resigned to seek the UCP leadership. He was left out of cabinet when Smith became Premier in October 2022 but was brought back to the cabinet table shortly after the 2023 election.
UCP BOARD VACANCY: UCP Vice President of Policy & Governance Raymond Strom passed away on May 11, leaving a position open to be filled on the party’s powerful provincial board of directors. Filling this position will be important for the UCP’s separatist-wing in order to maintain their control of the party’s provincial board, which they won at the UCP AGM in 2026.
Strom was the nephew of Harry Strom, who served as Alberta’s last Social Credit Premier from 1968 to 1971.
Political party fundraising: UCP dominates the first quarter of 2026
Elections Alberta disclosures from the first quarter of 2026 were released and show Danielle Smith’s UCP raised $2,478,702.89 between January 1 and March 31, putting the governing party miles ahead of Naheed Nenshi’s NDP, which raised $1,021,436.32 in the same period.
The UCP has shown strong first quarter fundraising returns for the past three years, likely owing in part to the party’s well-attended leader’s dinner fundraising events held in Bonnyville, Red Deer and Edmonton, and a significant number of maximum amount annual donations made in the first few months of the year.
The UCP allowing donations from private corporations, a practice that was made illegal by the NDP in 2015, has also led to a significant influx of money into UCP coffers.
The Pro-Life Political Association, an anti-abortion group, raised $140,276.50 in the first quarter. The group rarely runs political candidates in elections and uses the registration status of the former Social Credit Party to issue generous political party tax receipts for donations that support its political advertising activities.
Rounding out fundraising returns for the smaller parties are the Progressive Tory Party of Alberta with $58,590.79, Liberal Party with $7,339.50, Green Party with $1,382.00, the Republican Party with $1,110.00, and the Independence Party with $78.75.
The Advantage Party, Communist Party, Solidarity Movement of Alberta, Wildrose Independence Party, Wildrose Loyalty Coalition raised no money in the first quarter of 2026.
These quarterly reports only tell part of the fundraising story. Changes made by the UCP to political finance laws in 2021 mean that money raised by constituency associations is not included in the quarterly disclosures and is reported annually.
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