Alberta’s governing Conservatives may be going nowhere, but the right-wing Wildrose Alliance seems to be heading to the same place.

Throughout the summer doldrums, as the Conservatives under Premier Ed Stelmach have muddled along, Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith has been preaching to her far-right choir.

As a result, neither of the two parties most likely to form the next government of Alberta seems poised to make a breakthrough with voters.

That means the Wildrose Alliance desperately needs more defections from the ranks of Stelmach’s caucus if it is going to hold onto its credibility as a serious challenger and maintain its momentum. And it needs them soon.

However, unlike a year ago, it no longer appears to be a sure thing that the upstart party can pull off this feat.

For a while, anyway, Premier Stelmach seemed to have reasserted firm control over his fractious caucus. Conservative MLAs who a year ago were pretty sure they’d soon cross the floor to the next Big Political Thing are no longer so certain that’s the right career move.

If the premier is now once again encountering rumbles of discontent within his own ranks, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Alliance looks like as good a destination for disgruntled Tories as it did last year.

At the end of September 2009, all Alberta was abuzz with a report in a subscription-only political newsletter that 10 backbench Conservative turncoats were about to make the long march to the opposition benches of the Wildrose Alliance.

At the time, Premier Stelmach seemed to have lost control of his caucus. Smith, a politically sexy former journalist beloved by the mainstream media, was the leading contender for the leadership of the suddenly interesting Wildrose Alliance. And Paul Hinman, the outgoing leader of the Alliance, had just been elected to the Legislature in a Sept. 14 by-election in Calgary-Glenmore.

It all seemed to be coming together for the Wildrose Alliance like a political fairy tale: On Oct. 14, Smith was elected Wildrose leader to huge media accolades. Then, on Jan. 4 of this year, two Conservative MLAs made the walk — Rob Anderson from the Airdrie-Chestermere riding just north of Calgary and Heather Forsyth of Calgary-Fish Creek crossed the floor to the Wildrose benches amid intense media attention.

A series of public opinion polls — not all of them necessarily scientific or reliable, however — seemed to indicate the Alliance’s popularity, in the word inevitably used by the media, was soaring.

Lately, however, Wildrose Alliance momentum has slowed. Enough credible polls have showed Stelmach’s Conservatives remaining in the lead, if only slightly, that even Smith’s many media cheerleaders have grown wary of pushing the horserace yarn too hard.

The most recent MLA to join the Wildrose caucus — sort of — hardly caused a ripple of media interest. That’s because Guy Boutilier, MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo, had been fired from the Conservative caucus in July 2009 for arguing with the premier about a broken promise to his riding. Everyone expected him to move to the Wildrose caucus sooner or later anyway.

So his enthusiastic endorsement of Smith at the party’s July policy convention was met with a collective shrug. What’s more, for the moment Boutilier has hung onto his officially “independent” status in order to keep his research and staff budget.

On the government side of the House, Stelmach has proved to be tougher and more resilient than expected. And there is also the matter of money — the Conservatives have it in amounts that no other party, including the Wildrose Alliance with its friends in the oilpatch, can match.

So with this murky situation prevailing as Alberta’s short summer draws to an end, you can count on it that the Wildrose Alliance is working frantically behind the scenes to woo enough additional defectors to at least strengthen its claim on official party status — plus the research budget that goes with it — as well as assuring voters the party is still a juggernaut destined for power.

Pretty clearly, the next step in that long march must be winning the hearts of enough additional Conservative MLAs to supplant Alberta’s flagging Liberals as the Official Opposition.

Whether or not the Alliance can succeed is, at this moment, an open question. If the Wildrosers can, their momentum will have been restored and they may very well become Alberta’s government in the next general election.

If they don’t, the Conservatives under Stelmach could eke out another majority, if a much reduced one.

And if Stelmach steps aside, all bets are off under a new Conservative leader.

This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...