In 2024, Alberta NDP decides who it is without Rachel Notley as leader

Since at least her days as premier, NDP Leader Rachel Notley has worn the same wristwatch. No luxury wrist bling it's a digital number, though not as smart as an Apple Watch either.

Notley instead relies on the simplicity of a Garmin Forerunner 35 with a silicon wristband. Big digital time display, and it can sync with her phone's texts with her husband and her music player.

Most importantly, it serves her near-daily running habit. Tracks distance, pace, heart rate along with the kilometres of her morning routine.

At some point next year, likely in the first few months, Notley will announce that she's tapping the button on her watch's upper right corner. The stop button.

She'll declare an end to this ultra-marathon she's endured as leader of Alberta's New Democrats. She will step aside, having lifted them from fourth-party status in the legislature to one-term government and now a second consecutive term back in the opposition benches, across nearly 10 years in the spotlight.

Then, it's race time of another sort, a months-long jaunt to replace her.

The contestants have already been limbering up. And yes, to extend this tortured metaphor just one bit further, there does not appear to be a front-runner, rather three candidates at the front of the pack.

In addition to renewal, it also means the progressive party gets to be preoccupied for much of 2024 in the sort of leadership intrigue that has repeatedly preoccupied its political rivals, from Alison Redford to Jim Prentice to Brian Jean (catches breath) to Jason Kenney to Danielle Smith.

With Smith seemingly solid (for now) in her United Conservative leadership, it's the other side's turn to figure itself out. What is the Alberta NDP without Rachel Notley in charge?

The long (and not-yet-started) goodbye

Let's be clear Notley has not announced any sort of departure yet. In a year-end interview that will be released later this month, she reiterated to my CBC colleague Janet French that she's not saying anything until she's ready to.

"As I've said before and I'll continue to say today, I'm going to take the time necessary to consider my future and consider all the various factors in that and I'll let people know once I've reached a conclusion," Notley said.

That's the official answer. Unofficially, it's widely understood in NDP ranks that Notley wanted to help guide her 38-member opposition caucus, half of whom are rookie MLAs, through the post-election process and their first legislature sitting this fall.

Many of them had been imagining (and/or bargaining for) which cabinet posts they'd get after the victory over Smith that never happened, so she had to temper their frustrations and assign all 38 an opposition critic's post. She has claimed full responsibility for her party's second consecutive loss, but the marked improvement over winning 24 seats in 2019 helped prevent New Democrats from demanding she exit promptly.

Many in the party owe her a debt of gratitude for lifting a perennial Edmonton rump party overwhelmingly dependent on union force into a competitive party with a broader progressive-centrist coalition that not only dominates the capital city, but is also strong in Calgary, and in May won the most votes in both major cities.

It's hard to find anybody in the party who expects Notley, who turns 60 next April, to stay on indefinitely and lead the party into a fourth straight election. A 1-for-3 electoral record and two straight defeats is subpar for any ex-premier, but better than any Alberta NDP leader before her could have imagined.

To give the next leader ample time to build a profile before the next provincial election in 2027, most NDPers expect an early 2024 or spring announcement from Notley, followed by a leadership race that extends through summer and likely fall.

And when she makes that long-awaited announcement, don't expect it to be a rapid exit. She'll more likely stick around while the party selects her replacement, rather than say goodbye and walk out the door.

She said in the interview that she believes a leader tends to only hand over reins immediately to an interim leader when they're hounded out of office over controversy or unpopularity, like former premier Alison Redford was in 2014.

"Typically that's not a thing that happens, so, I guess we'll see," Notley told CBC News.

Sticking around as opposition leader will allow her party to retain some degree of heat on Premier Smith and the cabinet while so many NDPers are busy in their internal contest.

There may be several names in the mix for leader, but three current MLAs appear to have the best mix of profile and nascent organization to be in the top tier: Sarah Hoffman, Kathleen Ganley, both former cabinet ministers, and second-term MLA Rakhi Pancholi.

Each would bring a different value proposition to the leadership.

Hoffman, an Edmonton MLA and former health minister, is the NDP lifer in the group, who was a caucus aide in the mid-2000s. She has been Notley's deputy premier and deputy opposition leader, and stands to be the continuity candidate.

While it's expected that Notley won't endorse anybody, quiet murmurs will emerge that Hoffman is her effective favourite, and insiders will look to see what parts of the current leader's own electoral machine get behind the deputy.

But the legion of Notleyites is expansive enough that some will likely back the other main candidates as well.

Ganley, the former justice minister, is a Calgary MLA, and that latter fact will be one of her biggest arguments to voters. With Edmonton smothered in NDP orange the last three elections, many New Democrats want to solidify and expand gains elsewhere and one Edmontonian or another has led the party continuously for the last four decades, since Grant Notley, Rachel's father, who represented northwest Alberta.

The party's energy critic, Ganley could stress ties to business and a more centrist approach, in hopes of expanding the party's political base.

Pancholi, is a suburban Edmonton MLA who was elected in 2019, the contest Kenney won. Because she didn't serve in Notley's recession-time, one-term government, she'll be able to present herself as more of a break from the past, and the record many Albertans look back on bitterly.

One likely asset in her corner will be close friend and fellow MLA Janis Irwin, who appears to have become the closest thing the Alberta NDP has to a social media sensation, especially popular among youth and the LGBTQ+ community. But will UCPers cast Irwin as a polarizing figure, and try to carve into Pancholi's renewal bid by proxy?

Crowding the race

Those might be the early top contenders, but others will put their name in, out of some combination of wanting the party to promote a broadly representative roster need one male, at least? or a desire to raise one's own political profile.

Edmonton MLA David Shepherd is said to be preparing his candidacy, building on the image he burnished as health critic during the pandemic, and new MLAs Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse and Samir Kayande may also kick tires and scrounge together deposit money. (Former environment minister Shannon Phillips, perennially whispered as a contender, is said to not be interested.)

As for outsiders, Alberta Federation of Labour's longtime head Gil McGowan's name bounces around the rumour mill, while former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi endorsed the NDP last election and perennially attracts speculation though he also tends to detest partisan politics.

Somebody will get to lead Alberta's NDP on a different trajectory, and this diverse array of options could take the opposition in notably different directions.

But this much seems clear: by this time next year, this won't be Rachel Notley's party anymore. Somebody else will lead the charge against the UCP and Danielle Smith with uncertain levels of success while Notley will be able to let her running watch tick along for a few extra kilometres every morning.

West of Centre1:04:15The first annual quiz show

What do you remember about the big political stories of 2023? West of Centre launches its inaugural year-end game show and quizzes the panel on the top stories of this year. Michael Solberg from New West Public Affairs, Zain Velji from Northweather and Alex Boyd from the Toronto Star join host Kathleen Petty.