Local Wildrose candidate Shayne Saskiw left the party's annual general meeting June 25-26 with a new job. The party hired Saskiw as the new executive director, replacing Vitor Marciano.
Saskiw will work for the party full-time while campaigning for the St. Paul – Lac La Biche constituency and will gear down practice as a lawyer.
Saskiw's new responsibilities will include fundraising, communications, candidate recruitment and financial reporting duties.
“I'll be working just as hard as I have been on campaigning," he said in a phone interview. “It allows me to entirely focus on the political scene."
Saskiw will work from Two Hills and travel for party business, but said he travelled a lot before taking on the position.
“Basically anything that goes good or bad is on the shoulders of the (executive director)."
Saskiw said he has slowly transitioned into the role and had already taken on pieces of the job before becoming official at the AGM.
Saskiw held the position of VP of policy with the Progressive Conservatives for over a year. Saskiw proposed a blue book policy document to permit every member to see the principles and policies of the party, an idea he said the party did not have the appetite for.
“I decided I couldn't bang my head against a wall for much longer and crossed over in the beginning of 2010."
The job involved trying to draft policy at the local level and make it party policy, something Saskiw said faced challenges.
“What had happened of course is that I found that the party had no interest in grassroots policy development, that it was all from the premier and the chief of staff down," he said. “The opinion of a grassroots members in the PC party didn't mean much."
An online poll conducted for Wildrose by Abingdon Research shows the party nearing the amount of support for the Progressive Conservatives, giving the party a good shot at forming a majority or minority government, said Saskiw. Another poll on net approval of leaders places Danielle Smith at the top of prospective premiers, ahead of top polling PC leadership candidate Gary Mar.
Smith plans to visit La La Biche July 29 and the St. Paul area in the first week of August.
