Cross's view prevailed, and Alberta's first Lieutenant-Governor, Liberal George Bulyea, invited Alexander Cameron Rutherford to form a government.
It has a Democratic governor, two liberal Democratic senators, and both houses of its legislature are firmly in Democratic hands.
He is a Republican governor of liberal Taxachusetts, a sprig of a powerful mid-western political dynasty, and is much admired as a businessman.
Nobuteru Ishihara, son of an outspoken Tokyo governor, mixes liberal reform with an unstuffy style.For all this, Mr Aso is a firm favourite.
The governor, a liberal Democrat during his more than two decades in the Senate, has notably tacked to the right on fiscal issues since taking office in March.
WHEN Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it.
Which George Pataki is he and how long will he stay that way? "He couldn't continue on that path," said E. J. McMahon, an analyst with the Manhattan Institute, referring to the governor's liberal drift in recent years.
This group identifies with the brand of politics Casey and his late father, a former governor, practiced – liberal on economic issues but supportive of gun rights and opposed to abortion.
Even one win on the night would have been a huge psychological boost for Mr Romney, upending the conventional wisdom that a Mormon Yankee, a former governor of liberal Massachusetts, could not carry a southern state, and sealing his position as overwhelming favourite to be crowned at August's nominating convention in Tampa, Florida.
Just four months into his job, the governor, a liberal Democrat who spent more than two decades in the Senate, is also trying to establish himself as a fiscal disciplinarian as he tries to head off opponents for his expected bid to be elected in his own right in 2010.
In 2008, he failed in his first attempt to win the Republican presidential nomination partly because he was seen as inauthentic: a moderate Republican who had been governor of liberal Massachusetts.
