It was one of those nights that you thought would never end.

But, end it did, with Saskatchewan MP and former Speaker of the House Andrew Scheer as the new leader of the federal Conservative party.

On the 13th ballot of the vote, Scheer picked up 50.95 per cent to narrowly edge out Maxime Bernier who had led the race from the start.

Banff-Airdrie MP Blake Richards was in Toronto for the leadership convention.  Despite the fact his first choice for leader was Ontario MP Erin O'Toole who finished third in the race, making it all the way to the 12th ballot before dropping off, Richards says Scheer's win doesn't surprise him that much. 

"I'll admit to being mildly surprised but I felt there were three people that had a good chance of winning and Andrew was certainly one of those three.  I think once I saw the first ballot results and he had a pretty strong result on the first ballot, I actually looked at the person next to me and said 'I think Andrew's going to win this'.  I knew it would take a number of ballots, but that's good when you have a good competitive race like that."

Richards says that Scheer's win shows he is well positioned to lead the party, and Richards hopes, eventually Canada.  "For Andrew to win, he really had to be able to draw support from a lot of other candidates, from different perspectives and from different parts of the country.  He's able to appeal broadly across the country and to different parts of our coalition.  To do that it means he's well positioned to do that in the general election."

Richards says he'd be lying if he said he wasn't disappointed that O'Toole didn't win the leadership.  He says there's a lot of similarities and alignment between Scheer and O'Toole.  "Ultimately, it was the second support of Erin O'Toole supporters that put Andrew Scheer into the leadership.  I think it was a result that certainly I'm happy with and I know Andrew Scheer will do a great job as leader."

Richards says Scheer has some work ahead to unify the party.  "Anytime you come out of a leadership race or a contest like this one, there's always going to be some effort required to do that.  How he conducts himself in terms of how he treats the people that supported other campaigns is going to be very crucial.  But he served some time as Speaker of the House of Commons so I think he knows how to mediate and deal with a variety of different camps so I have no doubt that he'll be capable of doing that."

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