Alberta Conservatives felt the punch packed by the New Democrats long before Rachel Notley knocked Jim Prentice out of the premier's office. Peter Lougheed used to say he learned the political ropes from the New Democratic Party. In their first campaign directed by Lougheed, the provincial Tory team—which also included future prime minister Joe Clark as party vice-president—lost a 1966 Pincher Creek by-election to Garth Turcott, an NDP lawyer with a storefront practice and a sterling local reputation. The giant-killer role included defeating Ernest Manning, the reputedly invincible premier who stepped into the ring personally to second his Social Credit party's candidate.
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