PCs, NDP place candidates in competitive Manitoba election races as polling gap narrows
PCs, trailing in polls, have 31 candidates selected, while NDP has 37 candidates, Liberals 9 and Greens 7
Less than six months from a scheduled provincial election, the governing Progressive Conservative Party and the Opposition New Democratic Party have selected their candidates in most of the competitive races where Manitoba's election will likely be won and lost.
The Progressive Conservatives will have nominated 31 of their 57 candidates by the end of the week, mainly in the Winnipeg constituencies the PCs already hold, as well as in rural strongholds. The party won 36 seats in the last election.
The New Democrats, favoured in public-opinion polls for two years, have selected 37 candidates, including most Winnipeg seats and the swing seats in rural Manitoba they're trying to win back. The NDP won 18 seats in the 2019 election.
"It seems to me that a lot of seats that are safe for both the PCs and the NDP are already full," said Royce Koop, a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba.
Some safe seats are still vacant — such as Morden-Winkler and Brandon West for the Progressive Conservatives — but many remaining openings for the two parties are in seats they'll struggle to win.
Early nominations reveal priorities: Koop
The Tories have only nominated two candidates in seats currently held by the NDP, while the New Democrats have seat openings in Winnipeg and parts of rural Manitoba they don't traditionally hold.
Koop suggested the parties may need time to find candidates willing to stick through challenging races.
Meanwhile, the Manitoba Liberal Party, which has three sitting MLAs, has selected nine candidates so far, while the Green Party of Manitoba, which has yet to elect a member to the provincial legislature, has seven hopefuls selected.
Koop said the earliest nominations can signal which seats a party is prioritizing.
Earlier this year the PC party endured the narrative that its MLAs were fleeing a sinking ship when 14 of 36 caucus members announced they wouldn't run again. However, most PC MLAs in Winnipeg are seeking re-election, and some of them are in hotly-contested seats.
"The fact that there are a lot of PC incumbents sticking around in Winnipeg suggests that maybe the party's polling is more optimistic than the data we're getting," Koop said.
"I'm sure it's going to be a race, it's going to be competitive, but it might not be a complete blowout for the NDP in the way that we think it will be."
PCs still need candidate in NDP-held seats
On the other hand, the PCs have only nominated two candidates in NDP-held ridings, which reflects the limited opportunities for the Tories to steal, Koop said.
New PC candidates include Jodie Byram, constituency assistant of current MLA Eileen Clarke, in Agassiz, Lauren Stone in Midland, and former municipal board chair Jeff Bereza for Portage la Prairie.
Kathleen Cook, former provincial director of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, is seeking the party's nomination in Roblin, and Carrie Hiebert and Liz Reimer, who both once worked for Cameron Friesen, are among those seeking Friesen's old job as MLA for Morden-Winkler. Those nominations have yet to be decided.
The Progressive Conservatives did not make a party official available for an interview.
Meanwhile, the NDP had its candidates selected in most competitive races since last fall — one year from the scheduled Oct. 3 vote.
"The NDP is trying to get ahead of the game," Koop said. "They have a really strong shot at winning this coming election and so they're getting their candidates in place and the candidates are active," he said, referring to their door-knocking, appearances at public events and social media profiles.
One cost to filing seats early is cutting off opportunities for high-profile candidates, Koop said. Many leftover seats aren't easily winnable.
Tim Johnson, the NDP's provincial secretary, said the party has benefited from getting candidates in place early. It's given members of the public somebody to turn to, especially in districts where the PCs have yet to nominate a candidate.
The NDP didn't want to "do what some other political parties might do, where they keep their line in the lake longer so you can catch bigger fish," Johnson said. "We want to make sure we have candidates out there doing the work because elections are won on the ground. They're won by people talking to their neighbours."
NDP candidates include former party cabinet minister Ron Kostyshyn in Dauphin, former Winnipeg School Division trustee Jennifer Chen in Fort Richmond and a number of teachers, including Mike Moyes, who will again challenge the PC's Rochelle Squires in a competitive south Winnipeg race.
The existing NDP MLAs are all running for re-election.
The Liberals have nine candidates nominated, including three incumbents and a return to the ballot for former Winnipeg Blue Bomber Willard Reaves in Fort Whyte and nurse Rhonda Nichol in Kirkfield Park. They put up good showings in byelections last year, with Reaves coming within 200 votes of winning a Tory stronghold.
Party president Nicholas Douklias said several nominations are booked for the coming weeks, and the Liberals are on their way to nominating all 57 candidates.
Douklias said the party has a leader in Dougald Lamont and a platform that are selling features for prospective candidates.
"It relieves the candidate knowing they're working for someone that is true to who they understood them to be," Douklias said in an interview last week.
The Green Party's new leader, Janine Gibson, is among the seven candidates the party has nominated so far, and is running in La Verendrye. She said there are 10 more individuals who've expressed an interest and they're aiming for a full slate of candidates. In the 2019 election, the Greens had 43 candidates.
On top of finding candidates, the party is about to launch a fundraising campaign for $25,000 in honour of its 25th year of operating, Gibson said.
The new right-of-centre Keystone Party of Manitoba, borne out of opposition to pandemic restrictions, would like to run 57 candidates, but party leader Ken Friesen said "we're not pushing the issue. We're allowing the grassroots of Manitoba to decide if they're ready to start a constituency association or not."
Friesen said the party is weighing the areas of Manitoba where people are showing an interest. They start with a community meeting and, if there's the appetite, a constituency association will follow. The Keystone Party has three associations established, and three more in the process.
Early election seems unlikely: political scientist
The PCs could still call the election earlier than scheduled, but Koop doesn't believe the conditions are ripe for that.
"You go into an early election if you want to catch the opposition party off guard, and they wouldn't be doing that. The NDP is nominating candidates; they're up in the polls."
In the latest Probe Research poll, the popular-opinion gap between the New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives narrowed to six percentage points in March, down from 11 points in December.
With the PCs "slowly inching up in the polls," Koop said, "there's really no reason for the government to go early. Unless something changes, I wouldn't expect them to."
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