The battle for the identity of the UCP is being waged in nomination races across Alberta

United Conservative Party nomination hopeful Dusty Myshrall stands on the back porch of Larry Henkelman's Ponoka house, listening to Henkelman's concerns about access to health services in central Alberta.

Henkelman, a former Ponoka mayor and a provincial conservative party member for decades, is upset that helicopter ambulances can't land in the city because the local helipad is closed.

Myshrall, a flight paramedic, is one of three people vying to be the next UCP candidate for Lacombe-Ponoka.

He's campaigning on health-care reforms and improved accountability for Alberta Health Services. But he's worried that the 2,600 UCP members in the constituency will be choosing a candidate based on alliances, not ideas.

"My concern with any special interest group is that if you start selecting a candidate, and propping up a candidate, then those candidates typically will become beholden to the special interest group and not to the voters that voted them in," Myshrall said in an interview earlier that day.

The political dynamics in Lacombe-Ponoka are a microcosm of a provincewide tussle within the UCP.

There are 102 days remaining until the province's fixed election date. And while the NDP and UCP trade partisan rhetoric, localized battles for control of the UCP are rumbling across the province.

"The party's a teenager, in terms of parties. And it's going through an identity crisis," said David Parker, executive director of a third-party political advertising group called Take Back Alberta (TBA). "I'm not worried about that identity crisis. I think most of the party are very strong advocates for the values that we care about."

On its website, TBA says it led the fight to remove Jason Kenney from the premier's office. Kenney stepped aside last October when UCP members voted in Premier Danielle Smith as party leader.

TBA chief financial officer Marco Van Huigenbos said in an interview that last fall, the organization recommended supporters elect representatives onto the UCP board of directors who most aligned with their values.

They're now focused on much more localized challenges.

Parker is travelling the province, hosting community meetings from Milk River to Spruce Grove, and encouraging people to get involved in conservative provincial politics at the grassroots by voting in local nomination contests or running for constituency association boards.

And that, they have — sometimes by the hundreds.

Parker says many TBA supporters are new to politics. Some are motivated by their outrage at what they perceived to be provincial and federal government overreach by the imposition of public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, he says.