Alison Redford is next premier of Alberta

Alberta Progressive Conservative party leadership winner Alison Redford speaks to supporters following the results of the leadership race in Edmonton October 2, 2011.

EDMONTON - Alison Redford pulled off a staggering come-from-behind victory in the early hours of Sunday morning to become Alberta's first female premier, wresting the Tory leadership from the hands of the man who had been the front-runner since the race began.

In just 14 days, the 46-year-old former justice minister vaulted from a distant second to take the helm of the Alberta Progressive Conservative party, doubling, tripling and even quadrupling her voter turnout in some ridings.

The stunning victory will be bittersweet for Redford, as it come less than four days after her mother, Helen, suddenly died.

"As you probably already guessed we had to go to our second choice ballots," party president Bill Smith said at 1:40 a.m. Sunday. He then drew party member's attention to big screens, which showed 37,104 votes for Redford, and 35,491 for Mar.

Redford wept as the crowd cheered.

"With this leadership process, we have renewed the party today," she told Tory members gathered at the Edmonton Northlands Expo Centre and those watching at home on television. "Alberta voted for change."

Mar spoke first, calling for the party to unite behind the new leader.

"I'm very proud of the campaign we ran . . . and I am excited about the future of our party," Mar told the hundreds of assembled members. "I'm encouraging the candidates . . . to get behind our new leader . . . Let's unite tonight."

Pollster Janet Brown said the week will be remembered by Redford as "the best of times and the worst of times.

"She just had the most difficult week of her life, and handled it with dignity and grace and people obviously responded to that. To see somebody under the pressure she was under, but still performing to a very high standard."

She added that the coming days will see a lot of scrutiny of what went wrong with Mar's campaign.

"I think the private health care statements were the thing that ultimately sunk him," Brown said. "Health care is the number 1 issue for Albertans, and I think they felt Gary's message was threatening, and they felt comforted by Alison's message of preserving public health care."

In Edmonton, Redford captured six ridings, most of them held by opposition parties like Edmonton-Centre and Edmonton-Strathcona. In the first ballot, Mar swept Edmonton. The premier-elect also emerged victorious in a majority of ridings in Calgary and even managed to win a handful of rural constituencies, where she was not particularly competitive during the first ballot.

The story of Redford's victory is astounding, and has stunned even the most season political observers.

Redford captured a mere 11,129 votes cast in the first round of balloting Sept. 17, just 18.75 per cent of the of 59,000 total. Mar, meanwhile, captured a whopping 24,195 votes, or 40.76 per cent. Some political observers called the Oct. 1 vote a coronation; others pointed out the math made it nearly impossible for Redford or third place candidate Doug Horner to win.

From the very beginning the 46-year-old wife and mother had cast herself as a new kind of Progressive Conservative, standing proudly outside of the "old boys club" and open to transformational change in the Tory establishment.

It was a high-stakes political manoeuvre that political observers said could destroy the party, leave her blackballed — or make her the next premier.

First, she called on the government to suspend a controversial land rights bill that riled rural voters. Then she publicly criticized Stelmach for blaming teachers for education layoffs. She stopped repeating the Conservative party line and called for a judicial investigation into charges of queue-jumping in the health-care system.

She was the first to release the names of her campaign donors and pledged to run a more transparent government.