Perhaps it doesn't matter who leads Alberta's minor parties to anyone except the partisan devotees of the persuasions that make up the membership.
We have politically stable Premier Rachel Notley leading the NDP, and equally secure Brian Jean who leads the official Opposition Wildrose Party.
However, politically vigorous Albertans have created minor political vehicles that have contested every general election since 1909, particularly those that might unseat the party in power.
These parties swarm like midges across the pages of the province's political history, more than 20 across the past 70 years and as many as a dozen in a single election.
The is no such thing as political oblivion for former governing parties but the death throes can be unending. Witness the Social Credit Party that still fields a handful of candidates in each election.
There is another name for the proliferation and longevity of minor parties, and the many irascible independent candidates that have filed nomination papers and contested elections.
Populism.
Populism that springs from, as Preston Manning said, "the dream of changing the world from a tractor seat."
Two of the three minor parties with elected MLAs - the Progressive Conservative and Liberal parties - are having leadership campaigns this spring.
They are fighting for Alberta's political scraps. The PCs have nine MLAs and the Liberals one.
The governing and official Opposition parties have 75 MLAs. The Alberta Party has one seat in the legislature - held by its leader Greg Clark.
The Alberta Liberal Party launched a leadership campaign on Jan. 16.
At the time of writing, there was one declared candidate, Mayor Nolan Crouse of St. Albert. He plans to continue with his mayoral duties even if he is announced the winner on June 4 of a seven-day Internet balloting process.
Liberal Party officials expect as many as four candidates will enter the race.
The new Liberal leader after June 4 must be a political force to be reckoned with, and if the progressives in the Conservative Party fail to coalesce into a separate political force, then the Liberals could become the progressive default to the NDP.
If the Progressive Conservatives' candidate with the highest profile, Jason Kenney, wins that party's leadership, he plans to unite his party with other conservative parties, including the Wildrose, to form a single alternative to the NDP in the next election.
Kenney may unite most of the right, but he will not capture one party - the conservative party that would be created by the exiled Progressive Conservatives who disagree with him to the point that they are now in open warfare with his organization.
It looks very much like the unwillingness of the Progressive Conservative Party executive leadership to accept Kenney as leader may split the progressives in the party from the united right.
The Progressive Conservative leadership convention is March 18.
- Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist, author of four books and editor of several more.
