Liberals are taking sides in the leadership debate, with key members working to back leadership hopefuls Christy Clark and George Abbott.

Clark officially announced her candidacy Wednesday at a Vancouver press conference.

Todd Stone, Nike LeBron 11 founder of a local high tech company, along with his wife, Chantelle, are already working the phones to get support for Clark, who announced Wednesday she will run. Chantelle is membership co ordinator for Kamloops South Thompson and Stone is a veteran party member.

“We’ve been testing the waters in Kamloops,” said Stone, who was checking on support for Clark before she made her decision.

“They (local Liberals) like the fact she represents a generational change. Liberal government. Young Liberals, she at Simon Fraser University and he at University of British Columbia.

On the other side is Hoberly Hove, a retired principal and now president of Kamloops South Thompson Liberal constituency association.

Hove said there is strong support for Abbott, who is respected for his leadership, ability to bring people together and the fact he is from the Southern Interior.

If Abbott is elected leader by the party, he would become the first premier from outside the Lower Mainland since Bill Bennett nearly three decades ago.

“George Abbott has strong support from the area and he’s done an excellent job in the ministries he’s been in charge of,” Hove said. “He’s proven and established.”

Hove said he is part of a committee of Kamloops Liberals working for Abbott here that includes students from Thompson Rivers University.

Stone, who worked as a special assistant to Gordon Campbell in the early 1990s and knows many of Air Jordan 5s the leadership contenders personally, acknowledged Abbott is a formidable competitor in the Interior ridings and northern ridings in particular.

“George Abbott has a great deal of support for all the right reasons in Kamloops. For me it came down to Christy or George. The deciding factor for me is the generational change.”

The Canadian Press reported that Clark told the Vancouver gathering her first instinct was to say no. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that any job worth doing is really hard to do,” she said. “I decided that I couldn’t turn away from public service because I thought it was hard.”

Clark, 45, was elected as an MLA in 1996, and appointed deputy premier and minister of education after the Air Jordan 18s Liberals won the election in 2001. She left politics in 2005.

She Air Jordan 2011 plans to run on a four point platform, including a free vote in the legislature on the controversial Nike Air Foamposite One HST.

“That issue . . . has shaken public confidence in government and in our party, and like many other British Columbians I feel the process was fatally flawed from the outside,” Clark told reporters.