Behind the scenes on election night: Anxious moments at the Murray, Gillingham campaigns

A year after Shelly Glover narrowly lost the race to become Manitoba's next premier, two of her campaign officials found themselves on opposite ends of a delicate phone call that would determine the final moments of Winnipeg's mayoral race.

On Oct. 30, 2021, Destiny Watt and Braydon Mazurkiewich were poring over the Progressive Conservative party leadership ballots on behalf of Glover at Winnipeg's Victoria Inn. Heather Stefanson ended up winning that contest over Glover by 363 votes.

On Oct. 26 of this year — municipal election night in Winnipeg — Watt served as the election-day chair for Scott Gillingham's mayoral campaign, while Mazurkiewich worked as a senior member of the Glen Murray campaign's marketing team.

Through the final months of the Winnipeg mayoral race, when Murray and Gillingham emerged as the two main contenders, Watt and Mazurkiewich remained friends.

By election night, the two former Gloverites formed one of the few reliable lines of communication between the two competing Winnipeg mayoral camps.

That connection proved to be crucial during the awkward minutes after Murray walked into the Provencher Room in the Fort Garry Hotel, the site of his campaign party, without taking the stage to concede an election officials in both camps already concluded Gillingham had won.

Murray entered the Provencher Room at 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday and started walking around the main-floor ballroom, a venue that has hosted thousands of weddings, bar mitzvahs and other celebrations over the decades. Eleven minutes later, he was still circulating through the room, embracing and shaking hands with supporters.

That's when Watt got on the phone with Mazurkiewich, trying to figure out when Murray would deliver a concession speech — and whether that would happen before Gillingham delivered a victory address.

"I was trying to get a sense of when things would happen," Watt recalled.

Standing near the entrance to the Provencher Room, Mazurkiewich was assuring his friend at 9:56 p.m. he would find Murray and get him onto the Provencher Room stage.

He got some help at 9:58 p.m., when the City of Winnipeg's election site posted a final Gillingham margin of victory of  4,391 votes.

From the initial days of Winnipeg's mayoral race, Gillingham's team was eager if not desperate to present its candidate as a front-runner in a campaign they were certain would eventually include Murray, a far more well-known and far more charismatic candidate.

Gillingham policy advisor Brian Kelcey said the team made an early 2022 decision not to attempt to distance the two-term St. James councillor from outgoing Mayor Brian Bowman.

Gillingham would have to wear any residual Bowman baggage, as it became obvious there could be no credible separation between the two close council allies and fellow Progressive Conservatives, said Kelcey.