Wildrose leader Smith claims the door is closing for floor crossers

Danielle Smith had one thing to say to MLAs from other parties in the legislature on Saturday afternoon.  

"The door is closing," She said.

The feeling amongst the party leaders is the process of nomination races will mean they will preclude adding more floor crossing MLAs.  As the party gains candidates it will no longer want or need these others to join them.  

Smith explained that she was getting contacts at each event from people wanting to run for the party so she was confident that they would have good candidates in place.

"I have a list of about 100 people on my blackberry that I have kept who have expressed an interest in running for us," Smith said, "We are to make sure we have a proper process for everyone."

For Smith she wants to avoid parachuting candidates from other regions into local constituencies.   She felt the role of the associations was to find these candidates because they knew who were the leaders in the community.

"We want local people representing each local area we don't want to bring people in from outside, we think it is very important that the person who represents that constituency has a really strong familiarity with the issues in that place."

The later events in the AGM included helping constituencies on finding people in their community and how to help introduce potential candidates to the party.  In other meetings they talked about how to help run constituencies and the pitfalls and decisions that are made by potential candidates in deciding to run.

Smith later received 98% support from her party in a call for a leadership vote.   Confidence in her leadership runs high after eight months as leader.