EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally said the Alberta Party’s leadership race began last March. It has been corrected to say it began in November.
The Alberta Party will announce its new leader Tuesday evening and three people are vying for the party’s top job.
The three candidates are former Edmonton mayor and Progressive Conservative health minister Stephen Mandel, Calgary lawyer Kara Levis and former United Conservative Party MLA Rick Fraser.
READ MORE: Where the Alberta Party leadership candidates stand on taxes, pipelines and education
The Alberta Party is aiming to be the centrist alternative for voters as the 2019 election approaches. It bills itself as socially progressive and fiscally conservative and sees an opportunity to come up the middle in the blood feud between Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP and Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party.
READ MORE: Alberta Party wants in the game after right wing merger
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But in the bottom-line business of politics, the Alberta Party has lagged in every metric since it rebooted its mandate on a centrist axis in 2010.
In the 2012 election, it ran 38 candidates but polled just 1.3 per cent of the vote and got shut out. In 2015, it ran three fewer candidates and polled 2.2 per cent, but did manage to elect then-leader Greg Clark in Calgary Elbow.
The leadership race has done wonders for membership though: the Alberta Party said it has multiplied by over six times from where it was almost a year ago.
According to numbers released by the party, the number of members has risen by 539 per cent since last March. In November, Greg Clark resigned as party leader, triggering a leadership race.
In March, there were 1,024 card-carrying members of the party. Now there are 6,543. In the last two days of eligibility earlier this month, 1,969 new members were signed up. The membership drive ended on Feb. 12.
READ MORE: Membership in Alberta Party soars by 500% ahead of leadership vote
The leadership vote results will happen at around 6 p.m. MT in Edmonton, at the University of Alberta’s Lister Conference Centre.
— With files from Eileen Bell, 630 CHED, and Dean Bennett, the Canadian Press
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