The former chair of the Alberta Beef Producers will carry the PC Party banner for Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills in the next provincial election.Acme-area producer rep Darcy Davis scored a decisive win Saturday night at the Didsbury Multiplex in a competitive race with former Mountain View County reeve Al Kemmere.Davis finished on top after the first count of the ballots with 515 votes compared to Kemmere's 424 and Carstairs accountant William Stevenson's 216.After Stevenson's second-choice votes were counted, Davis cruised ahead to win the contest with 593 votes compared to Kemmere's 457.ìDavis is the winner with 55.9 per cent of the vote,î nomination chair Pat James announced to the crowd of candidate supporters who stayed until after 10 p.m. to hear the results.ìIt's such an honour and it's so humbling at the same time,î Davis, 50, told the applauding crowd after Stevenson and Kemmere had made brief speeches thanking their campaign teams.Davis thanked the two candidates, as well as their wives Kathy Kemmere and Bev Stevenson, before calling his ìbetter halfî Nora up to the stage. He also thanked retiring MLA Richard Marz and paid tribute to ìtwo people who couldn't be hereî ñ his late father and his father-in-law Joe McCool, who urged Davis to run for the nomination before he died in August.ìI'm gonna work my butt off,î Davis pledged. ìWe gotta move things forward ñ we can't be about just one issue or one area.îìI think Darcy is going to be a good leader for us,î Kemmere said afterwards, adding that he hoped to be part of Davis's campaign team.ìWe discussed in the last three, four weeks that it was going to be a close race. We now know that we had support and I wanna take that support and move it over to Darcy.îOn a more personal note, Kemmere said: ìDemocracy is neat, but democracy hurts sometimes Ö But the people have spoken.îWith a total of 1,155 ballots cast, ìthe turnout was fantastic,î Kemmere said. ìToday it was huge.îJames called the total ìa record I'm sure for this constituencyî and returning officer Jordan Cleland said the numbers exceeded the constituency turnout for last month's leadership election by 400-450 votes.The breakdown for regional polls, Cleland said, was 207 ballots cast in Beiseker and 138 in Three Hills the previous week, and about 123 ballots cast in Cremona and 687 in Didsbury on Saturday.With Davis having higher name recognition on the east side of the constituency, Nora Davis admitted she had been ìa little worried about the high turnoutî of voters in Didsbury, but was pleased with the outcome.ìWe had a good team,î she said.Marz, who lives in Three Hills, said Davis was simply ìthe choice of the people.îìI don't think it's important where you live and that was evident with the people (voting) today. It wasn't a geographic thing.îWild Rose MP Blake Richards was also present at the end of the night to congratulate Davis on his win.Pointing to Davis's past role as president of the Canadian Agri-food Trade Alliance, Richards described Davis as a consensus builder.ìDarcy will be really strong on ag issues, trade issues; he will be strong on intergovernmental affairs. I think he's someone who will listen and represent the people,î Richards said.Nora Davis echoed Richards' comments when asked to name her husband's biggest asset.ìI think he's a good listener,î she said. ìHe's done a lot of town hall meetings, so he knows how to take the information and bring it back to the people and explain it.î
