Left-wing educator Alicia Barsallo told the Straight that she has her sights set on the federal NDP nomination for Vancouver Kingsway.

In 2005, she narrowly lost to current NDP health critic Adrian Dix for the provincial nomination in onetime B.C. premier Glen Clark’s former constituency. (In the 2001 decimation of the provincial NDP, Barsallo lost to former Liberal MLA Rob Nijjar.)

Barsallo’s said a major factor behind her recent decision was UBC medical-school professor Kerry Jang’s withdrawal from the race. She added that former COPE councillor Tim Louis encouraged her to run.

“Now that Kerry Jang isn’t running, that opens up the field,” Barsallo said. “I already have a lot of contacts from the last couple of provincial elections, and it goes without saying there are issues—antiterrorism legislation and the war [in Afghanistan], for example—that make federal politics relevant to me at this point.”

Jang, like Barsallo, lives in Vancouver Kingsway. In September, Jang told the Straight? he had decided to run because he cared about daycare and social housing, and because he wanted to protect the Canada Health Act. He is also president of the provincial NDP constituency association. In the past few months he helped organize the “people’s by-election” on whether or not International Trade Minister David Emerson should resign and seek a new mandate after crossing from the Liberals to the Conservatives.

“To be honest, the UBC medical school was keeping me very busy, and I want to focus on finishing the expansion of the school,” Jang said. “It was a tough choice, I tell you, and I agonized over it for weeks. In the end, my professional commitments won out, much to my wife’s relief.”