With the Alberta PC leadership race underway, leadership hopefuls are hitting the hustings, releasing policy platforms, attending debates and rallying their troops.

With candidates looking for a leg-up on their competition, some have taken to conducting public opinion polling on how they rate as a leader. Others are conducting focus group sessions on their policy proposals. And others are talking to experts on issues of importance. All of this is designed to help these candidates win the leadership race and then the next general election.

However, candidates who are serious about not only winning the leadership, but seeing future electoral success should be looking to the past as well. Who better to take your cues from than a leader who had massive majorities and sky-high popularity Why bother putting your policies in front of a few dozen people in a focus group when you already have the voting results of a million Albertans

Ralph Klein undoubtedly had a successful run as Alberta's twelfth premier. He won four majority governments and received approval ratings that made other Canadian premiers envious. Ralph Klein's time in office can really be divided into two governments. The first was a fiscally conservative, end corporate welfare, and cut taxes kind-of-government. The second was a spend happy, re-start corporate welfare, and raise taxes kind-of-government.

It's not hard to figure out which one Albertans liked better.

Ralph Klein and the PC Party fought the 1993, 1997 and 2001 elections all on the platform of paying-off our provincial debt and cutting taxes. These very laudable goals obviously resonated well with Albertans as they rewarded Klein with growing majorities (51 seats in 1993, 63 seats in 1997, and 74 seats in 2001).

However, things changed after 2001. Although the provincial debt was eliminated in 2004, gone was the government dedicated to frugal spending (spending has soared by 64 per cent since the 2001 election). And gone was the government dedicated to lower taxes (taxes were hiked by $641 million in the 2002 budget).

Unable to run on a debt retirement platform and having hiked spending and taxes, the government had to nothing but their recent record to run on. Result: gone were 12 PC MLAs (62 seats in 2004). Coincidence

Even with this electoral proof that Albertans favoured the first Klein government over the second, you'd think following recent news stories that Ralph Klein's legacy of eliminating Alberta's annual budget deficit and provincial debt was somehow a bad thing.

Most recent, PC leadership hopeful, Dave Hancock, graced the pages of provincial and national newspapers criticising his own government for being too single-minded in paying-off the provincial debt.

Perhaps someone needs to remind Mr. Hancock it was a debt that cost taxpayers $1.7-billion at its peak in annual interest payments. This amounted to $4.8-million every single day in 1994-95. Collectively, taxpayers paid an additional $20.3-billion in extra taxes to cover combined interest charges over the past 20 years. Paying-off that debt has saved taxpayers $1.5-billion a year in interest payments alone, or $4.1-million a day.

Leadership candidates like Mr. Hancock would be wise to take a lesson from Premier Klein. Restrict spending, cut taxes, end corporate welfare programs, and the voters add PC MLAs. Increase spending, increase taxes and introduce government meddling into the free-market, and 200,000 voters stay home subtracting PC MLAs.

It's simple math.