Schumacher first ran for the
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in the
1968 federal election and was elected to represent
Palliser in Alberta. He served three terms in the House of Commons. During this time Schumacher chaired the Alberta Progressive Conservative caucus and was the secretary of the national caucus for one year. As a result of
redistribution before the
1979 federal election, the district of Palliser was abolished. Schumacher intended to seek his party's nomination in the new riding of
Bow River, which included much of his old district However, party officials asked him to step aside in favour of leader
Joe Clark, whose own riding of
Rocky Mountain had also been abolished. Although Tory officials offered him the nomination in another riding, Schumacher refused to stand down, forcing Clark to run in
Yellowhead. In Bow River, Schumacher was challenged for the nomination by former
Socred Gordon Taylor, who had represented much of the new riding provincially for almost 40 years. Taylor defeated Schumacher at a controversial meeting in which Schumacher's supporters alleged that people who were not bona fide members of the party voted. Schumacher's former assistant,
John Aimers, resigned from the party in January 1978 in protest, accusing the national executive of engineering Schumacher's defeat. On 28 February 1978, Schumacher left the party and sat as an independent. In the
election the following year, he ran in Bow River against Taylor and was defeated by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. ==Provincial political career==