Rachel Notley: Alberta's progressive politics giant prepares to step aside

Toward the end of the 2015 Alberta election campaign, NDP Leader Rachel Notley summoned her four-member caucus to an Edmonton hotel room with little explanation.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, what's happening?'" said David Eggen, who was campaigning to keep a north Edmonton seat.

"And she said, 'I think we're going to win.' And that was just the jaw-dropping moment."

As Notley, a colossus of Alberta progressive politics, prepares to step away from party leadership, colleagues and ideological foes say she has fundamentally changed the province's political landscape — and far beyond that underdog 2015 election win.

Nearly a decade after disrupting an 80-year streak of right-wing governments in Alberta, Notley, now 60, is in her final week as NDP leader.

Party members will welcome a new leader in Calgary on Saturday.

Electoral choice is one of the greatest gifts Notley has given to the province, Eggen said.

That might sound like a given to other Canadians, but before 2015 was foreign to Albertans, who had elected consecutive Progressive Conservative governments since 1971.

But in May 2015, Notley and the NDP handily defeated Jim Prentice and his PCs, scooping up 54 of 87 seats in an upset win that saw the Wildrose form the Official Opposition.

In an interview last week, Notley remembered the final days of the 2015 campaign as a mix of excitement and overwhelming panic. She said she realized the NDP's strategy had to pivot from hosting rallies for loyal supporters to preparing to govern Alberta.

Jason Kenney, who would succeed Notley as premier in 2019, liked to refer to the "accidental NDP government" Albertans chose in 2015.

But other politicians and pundits from across the spectrum say what Notley built was far more deliberate and structural: she created a viable option for voters on the left of the spectrum, a party that could legitimately contend for power.

A confluence of factors created the conditions for the NDP to win in 2015. 

Melanee Thomas, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, cited "economic voting" by Albertans worried about the PC government's management of the economy and provincial coffers at a time when oil prices were sliding precipitously.