EDMONTON — A former Alberta civil servant who accused Premier Ralph Klein of Shredding the Public Interest in a best-selling book will lead the Liberals against him in the next provincial election.

Kevin Taft soundly defeated rivals John Reil and Jon Friel in a leadership race conducted in a seven-day telephone ballot that ended Saturday.

Taft received 2,354 votes, compared to 205 for Edmonton-area farmer and businessman John Reil and 174 for prison psychologist Jon Parsons Friel of Sherwood Park, Alta.

Two-thirds of the 4,157 eligible voters cast ballots.

"The current government is tired, they're out of ideas," Taft told a cheering crowd of about 250.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall. This government will fall because they're worn out. They've used up all their time and all our money. Thirty years and all the billions and billions in windfall revenues and they've built nothing but a zero."

Taft said he was looking forward to getting back to the legislature and looking across at Klein and the Tories.

"I'll have one thought -- let me at 'em."

Taft inherits a financially strapped party with a stagnant membership and a steadily shrinking number of sitting members in the legislature with an election looming.

"It's a real David versus Goliath battle, but it's one we have to fight," Taft said in a recent interview.

"While today the Tories seem unbeatable in the next election, that picture can change drastically."

Taft, who holds a business doctorate, replaces leader Ken Nicol who stepped down after one term to run federally for the Paul Martin Liberals.

Liberal health care critic since he was elected to the Alberta legislature in 2001, Taft accused the Klein government in his 1997 book Shredding the Public Interest of misleading Albertans to justify the massive budget cuts of the mid-'90s.

Klein dismissed the book as "communism."

Taft's leadership bid went unchallenged by his legislature colleagues and prominent Alberta Liberals. One colleague suggested he wasn't running because he feared he might win.

Taft's stiffest opposition for the leadership came from the far right. Reil, 55, is a former Social Credit party member who went on to found the now-defunct Alberta First Party.

Friel, 58, of Sherwood Park, Alta., is a political neophyte.

The Liberals have a $900,000 debt remaining from their unsuccessful 2001 campaign under former leader Nancy MacBeth.

Some Liberals have written off the party's chances in the upcoming 2005 vote and are looking further ahead to the election beyond that when they hope Klein will have retired.

Percy Wickman, a former Liberal member of the legislature, said he believes Klein can't be beat.

But Taft said he's in for the long haul and he's confident the party can be successful.

"I am very much of the view that politics is a team process and I am confident I can put together a team of necessary, fairly small numbers of key people who can change the government," Taft said.

"I don't want to kid myself. I think there's a danger in being overly optimistic but there's a real sense of a growing appetite for an alternative to the Tories."

Former Edmonton Liberal energy critic Lance White said the popular notion that Klein is unbeatable will make it difficult for Taft to raise funds for a campaign.

"It is going to be a tough row to hoe, that's for sure," he said. "It will be very difficult but he's up to the task. he's a big boy. He knew that in advance of going in."

The party has seen four leaders -- Laurence Decore, Grant Mitchell, MacBeth and Nicol -- in the past decade.

Decore came the closest to forming Alberta's first Liberal government since 1921 when the Liberals elected 32 members to the 51 Klein Tories in 1993. But Klein increased the size of his majority in every election since.

There are now 74 Tories in the 83-seat legislature.

Faron Ellis, a political scientist at Lethbridge Community College, said Taft faces a monumental challenge and history isn't on his side.

Alberta has historically been a one-party state featuring dynasty after dynasty. But when Albertans change governments they do it suddenly and almost always they go for a new party over a longstanding opposition party, he said.

The United Farmers of Alberta turfed the Liberals and the Social Credit came out of nowhere to oust the UFA.

The Liberals may find hope in Peter Lougheed's Progressive Conservatives, who went from a six-member opposition to the Socreds to form government in 1971.