The NDP’s looming leadership contest to replace Tom Mulcair has been overshadowed by the early headlines of the rival Conservatives’ race, but as it picks up in the fall, strategists say the process will help redefine a party struggling to stay relevant in the wake of the 2015 election.

After months of enduring the ongoing Liberal honeymoon, NDP strategists suggest the party will use the leadership race to delineate its lane in a political left now dominated by the governing Liberals ahead of the 2019 election.

Defining that narrow space — somewhere wedged between the honeymooning Liberals and now-tumultuous Greens on the left and the post-Harper, tone-changing Conservatives on the right — will likely require a rehashing of the chronic debate in the party between its ideological purists, now represented by the Leap Manifesto wing, and pragmatists willing to water their ideological wine for wider electoral appeal.

Sally Housser, a long-time NDP staffer who worked as a press secretary for the late federal NDP Leader Jack Layton and Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley and who served as the deputy national director of the federal NDP in 2012, said it may not be the party that’s the problem, but the political spectrum itself.

“I personally would argue the Green Party is not to the left of the NDP on some things — I think that linear left-centre-right [configuration] is a little antiquated.”

Housser, now a senior consultant with Navigator, said candidates will not just try to win the hearts and minds of members but will put forward their own vision for charting the course for the future of the party.

“I think in part with a longer leadership race that’s what we’re seeing this time around,” said Housser, suggesting this is a real opportunity for the party to trade old debates and discussion and pull together that vision for the NDP.

“I mean that vision is not just about policy — it’s also about organization, where our resources are put, how do we best promote our message and how do we engage with the common voter,” added Housser.

The NDP has the advantage of picking its leader after the Tories pick theirs, in May 2017, so they’ll know who they’re up against on the right. The new leader will be chosen between October 1 and October 29, 2017, with rounds of ranked-ballot voting held once a week until the first candidate to hit the 50-per-cent-plus-one mark to be declared leader. So far, there are no confirmed candidates.

Those rumoured to be interested in the job include NDP MP Guy Caron, whose office said he’s still considering running and will make a decision in the fall. NDP MP Peter Julian said in June that he is still mulling it over.

Policy is a key component of the process, said Housser, but any leadership candidate will have to make a case for how the NDP is going to win and rebuild the party.

Shay Purdy, an NDP strategist with Summa Strategies, said that whether by design or not, the NDP leadership race will define the party for at least the next few years.

“I’m certain that [the party] will be as deliberate as possible about how they shape the process and the debate,” he wrote in an email.

Purdy says part of the mission for the party during this leadership cycle is to move past the devastating loss of the 2015 campaign by reminding people of Layton’s unprecedented political success in 2011. During the 2015 race, Mulcair went from a comfortable lead to a third-place showing on election day, partly because he was outflanked on the left by Justin Trudeau’s promise of deficit spending vs. his own vow of balanced budgets.

“It’s the party’s job to give this leadership race a look and feel that tells Canadians that 2011 was not a flash in the pan, and that the NDP is a winning political operation. The visioning is up to the leadership candidates,” he said.

As far as redefining its lane between the Liberals and the Greens, “a candidate who proposes that we need to be more like either of them in order to succeed is probably not going to be received well by the membership,” Purdy says.

Housser suggests it would also help eclipse the ideological debate if the party could draw candidates with sufficient charisma to compete with Trudeau, up to a point.

“You can have all the policy you want but you do need to have a leader who’s engaging,” she said.

“I don’t think any party — whether it’s the Conservative party or us going through [our] leadership race — I don’t think you’re going to out-Trudeau Trudeau in terms of getting that level of selfie fame,” she said, adding ruefully, “or getting someone to walk around shirtless getting pictures taken.”