A quiet evening at the Mill Woods golf course in Edmonton Wednesday was the epicentre of a political battle that could dissolve the party that ruled Alberta for 44 years.

Cloaked against a light fall chill, Edmonton-Ellerslie Progressive Conservatives filed into the clubhouse, ready to elect 15 delegates to send to the party's leadership convention in March.

But the man who has pledged to end the PC party and merge it with Wildrose to create a united conservative front — a plan that has some party faithful squirming in their seats — had booked a hospitality suite in the same building.

"You can't be here," party president Katherine O'Neill told Jason Kenney as he walked inside what was, for all intents and purposes, a polling station.

"Oh gosh, sorry, I didn't know," Kenney replied.

As he walked outside into the night, back to his blue campaign truck now devoid of the Unite Alberta decals that were plastered there for months, his team followed, one turning around declaring the situation "ridiculous."

Murmurings of disquiet morphed into an argument, as party members with the leadership campaigns of Richard Starke and Byron Nelson declared they would contest all results from the evening's vote unless the hospitality suite was shut down.

As Kenney's team member shook his head, arguing they had done nothing wrong, O'Neill intervened, asking them to "cool it" as they registered an official complaint with the returning officer.

O'Neill said later she was "very disappointed" that Kenney had flouted rules that were "very clear."

Out in the parking lot, Kenney shrugged that he didn't realize he was in the wrong.

In the end, Kenney's team were ecstatic as the results of the vote were read out just after 9 p.m., with all 15 delegates, and the five alternates, aligned with his campaign.

Before Kenney turned up just after 7 p.m., O'Neill said she wasn't sure what would happen at the delegate selection meeting that evening; "It's politics," she said, so there's always a chance of fireworks.

The downtrodden PCs are trying to rebuild after being kicked to the curb in the last election, losing a healthy majority to become the third-place party.

At the Progressive Conservative AGM in May, members voted that the next leadership campaign wouldn't use the one-member, one-vote system, returning instead to delegates.

The last time the PCs used a delegate system to pick a leader, Wham! and Madonna ruled the music charts, Back to the Future hit the big screen and Rick Hansen had just begun his 40,000 kilometre Man in Motion tour.

That year, 1985, Don Getty was elected leader of the party and went on to serve as premier until 1992.

O'Neill acknowledged the delegate system is a "staggering" amount of work, but she's convinced it's a fair way to elect a party leader because no single region — be it Edmonton, Calgary or rural Alberta — will control the vote.

"It goes back to every riding having an equal say, because while less people are actually casting ballots, there's more input into getting them there," she said.

She said there is already proof that the leadership race is helping to rejuvenate the PCs.

"In the last month, 5,000 people have signed up to join the party. It’s part of the rebuild, it’s part of moving forward," she said.

Over the coming months, each of the 86 other constituency associations across Alberta will vote for their 15 delegates, with Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville and Spruce Grove-St. Albert both headed to the polls Thursday.

"We need this system right now," O'Neill said.

"It’s engaging people in all these ridings, and that's great."

egraney@postmedia.com

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