The provincial Progressive Conservative race will provide a new premier for this province. It will be up to the voters to determine whether the job will have long-term employment prospects.
Here is the drill: an aging party with obvious signs of chronic fatigue has to reinvent itself for a restless electorate in the province. The Progressive Conservatives have to distance themselves from themselves in order to win the next election.
Since the right to vote is hardly about to challenge massive body tattoos and face jewelry in the hearts and minds of our younger generation, most voters will be long in tooth and short on permanent body wallpaper.
The core group of voters will be older and presumably wiser when they exercise their democratic right to vote.
Many of them will remember a golden era of Alberta PCs, led by a legend named Peter Lougheed. It was an era of oil embargoes, rising energy prices, the birth of the oilsands, and a showdown with the bad guys in Ottawa.
The war between Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau was eventually resolved by a change in oil prices, and an eventual shift to a federal Conservative government, but Lougheed rode tall into the sunset.
He handed the ball off to his former Eskimo teammate Don Getty in a famous sacrificial lamb play. Getty became premier during a downturn in oil prices, and a period when ill-advised government investment in the Principle Trust and Gainers/Pocklington affairs became public knowledge.
Getty even lost his seat during this period as a disgusted public began to doubt the integrity of the provincial PC party. The groundswell of discontent meant that the Tories had to re-invent themselves in the early 1990s.
Enter popular Calgary mayor-turned-provincial cabinet minister Ralph Klein. His roots with the party were pretty thin because Klein was associated with Liberal politics more than the Conservatives prior to his election as a Conservative MLA.
His spirited win as PC party leader propelled him right into the premier’s job and a subsequent facelift for the party. He was a quotable slash-spending machine during his early years as premier and he was nothing like his genteel predecessors as the party leader.
Klein was a consummate politician/showman who was a quick study on the job. He was loved by many for his antics, but eventually questioned for his policies that spiraled into unchecked spending and ill-advised $400 cheques to Albertans — with few checks and balances on eligibility.
Klein’s sideshow act eventually forced his party to put him out to pasture before he did permanent damage to the provincial PC brand. The subsequent leadership battle between business moderate Jim Dinning and right wing professor Ted Morton was a bloodbath that eventually took out both candidates.
Steady Eddie Stelmach found the middle road between the two heavyweights and united the party under his captaincy. It proved to be a lot more eventful than voters anticipated.
Stelmach took an unusual approach to the oil industry in Alberta when he borrowed from the Trudeau playbook and torched oil investment in the province during a major global recession.
He also flirted with a multi-billion-dollar investment proposal in a carbon capture program based more upon feel-good vibes than actual science.
His lack of aggressive support for the oilsands also stuck in the craw of Albertans, although he became more supportive during the past year.
But the non-charismatic Stelmach is now history with the party after his political gaffes forced voters to take a long hard look at the Progressive Conservatives.
They need a new leader with minimal political baggage to lead them into the next election against the upstart Wildrose Party.
The question for PC supporters is whether any of the political horses in their party derby have the legs to win the next election.
Every one of them now wears the PC brand — and that may not be an asset when older voters with long memories cast their ballots.
The winner of the PC slugfest may well be the next Harry Strom.
Jim Sutherland is a local freelance writer. He can be reached at jim@mystarcollectorcar.com.