Tara Sawyer, former chair of Alberta Grains, has been elected to the provincial legislature in the riding of Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills.
She earned 9,362 votes, more than tripling her closest competitor, Bev Toews of the NDP, at 3,063. Republican Party of Alberta candidate Cam Davies, who had resigned his membership in the UCP, finished in third with 2,708 votes.
Sawyer replaces UCP MLA Nathan Cooper, who resigned to become Alberta’s senior representative in Washington, D.C. Cooper had been the area’s MLA for a decade.
Sawyer, a wheat, barley and canola farmer from Acme, was elected as Alberta Grains’ inaugural chair in 2023 after the amalgamation of the Alberta Wheat Commission and Alberta Barely. She took a leave of absence from her position to campaign for the MLA position in mid-May.
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The other two byelections were won by the NDP in the ridings of Edmonton Ellerslie and Edmonton Strathcona.
