For the first 25 years of its history, the Alberta Party was a right-wing, separatist political alternative to the Progressive Conservative dynasty.
It never amounted to much and its leaders could not match the polish and performance of the succession of conservative premiers it faced, from Don Getty to Alison Redford.
They never recruited anyone of the calibre of a Danielle Smith, a Brian Jean or a Jason Kenney to command the money, membership and media presence they needed to be contenders in the province’s large herd of fringe political parties.
Then in 2013 an influential young Calgary business entrepreneur, Greg Clark, became the party leader and won the riding of Calgary-Elbow to sit in the legislature.
Clark was on his way to creating a successful third party to hold the moderate middle of the political spectrum when Premier Jim Prentice blew up the 44-year Progressive Conservative regime in the election of 2015.
Enter the ambitious three-term mayor of Edmonton, Stephen Mandel, a Strathcona County mobile home park owner.
Mandel had been health minister in the brief Prentice government and lost his Edmonton McClung seat in the NDP electoral Orange Crush.
He formed a cabal of Progressive Conservative insiders called Alberta Together with former Progressive Conservative president Katherine O’Neil as its executive director.
It had no truck or trade with the official Opposition Wildrose Party, or with Jason Kenney who was emerging as the right-wing answer to Rachel Notley and the NDP.
Mandel’s and O’Neil’s target of opportunity was the Alberta Party as the moderate middle party in the 2019 election.
They believed they could relegate Notley as an accidental premier and stop Kenney.
They first had to depose Greg Clark as Alberta Party leader who had grown his caucus from one to four MLAs in the political turbulence of the Prentice and Notley years.
The inside story of how they shunted him aside has yet to be told, but Mandel emerged as the leader of the Alberta Party.
Mandel and his organizers recruited a full slate of candidates for all 87 ridings in the province.
But on election day, not one – including Mandel – won a seat.
The party garnered only nine per cent of the provincewide popular vote and finished a distant third in most of the constituencies.
Mandel made one error at the beginning of the campaign that hurt his credibility.
He missed the statutory deadline to file the financial report on his campaign expenses for the nomination campaign in Edmonton-McClung
Elections Alberta enforced a regulatory five-year ban on Mandel’s participation as a candidate in provincial elections.
Mandel threw his chief financial officer under the bus – blaming him for the oversight.
He went to court and his lawyers persuaded the judge that the punishment was too severe.
Alberta voters had the last word and threw Stephen Mandel and the Alberta Party under the bus on election day April 16.
The 2019 election was the NDP fighting for survival and the UPC, for its entitlement.
No one was interested in the moderate middle.
But the Alberta Party with a new, more credible leader in 2023 can restore centrist politics.
In four years, if anyone remembers Stephen Mandel it will be as a footnote.
– Frank Dabbs is a veteran business and political author and journalist.
