First of all, here’s a blog that the political geeks out there, myself included, are just going to eat up. It’s called Nomination Watch and has all the dirt on candidates and potential candidates from across the country.

I wish I had some hot rumours to share with that site but really, it’s Calgary so who really cares? However, I can give you what Nomination Watch refuses to do; the list of victorious local candidates in Election 2005:

Calgary Southwest: Stephen Harper
Calgary West: Rob Anders
Calgary Nose Hill: Dianne Ablonczkjkcztrzky
Calgary Northeast: Art Hanger
Calgary East: Deepak Obhrai
Calgary Southeast: Jason Kenney
Calgary Centre: Lee Richardson
Calgary North-Centre: Jim Prentice

Well, there you have it – your 2005 victorious Calgary MPs. As for the Liberals, it sounds like they’re making progress in candidate recruitment. Ted Hanney, the anti-gay marriage cattle rancher, is the only incumbent who has confirmed they’ll lose again for the Liberals. It appears that potential candidates have been lined up for the other ridings although, to put it mildly, there won’t exactly be many hotly contested nominations. Regardless, the party will be doing everything to save costs and there will be at least one, if not two, shared campaign offices. People seem to have resigned themselves to reality so expect a lot of low budget, no frills campaigns from the Grits in Calgary.

But, like I said, it’s all sort of irrelevant in a province where only one seat is up for grabs.