Tuxedo byelection has all 4 Manitoba parties eyeing Winnipeg constituency that has only ever voted Tory blue
CBC
In the 43 years since the formation of Tuxedo as a provincial electoral district, voters in the affluent Winnipeg constituency have only elected two MLAs, both of them Progressive Conservatives who served as premier.
The first was Gary Filmon. The second was Heather Stefanson. Together, they won 13 general elections or byelections in Tuxedo.
Only two of those contests were close.
On election night in 1988, Liberal candidate Jasper McKee came within 124 votes of defeating Filmon, the PC leader and premier designate. McKee's strong showing was bolstered by the popularity of Liberal leader Sharon Carstairs, whose party served as the official opposition to a Filmon-led PC minority government.
In 2023, the NDP narrowly missed capturing Tuxedo. NDP candidate Larissa Ashdown came within 268 votes of defeating Stefanson, whose personal popularity had plummeted following six previous victories where her average margin of victory was 2,372 votes.
Ashdown did not appear to campaign vigorously in that race. But now that Stefanson has resigned and the PCs remain without a full-time leader, the New Democrats have deployed significant numbers of volunteers in Tuxedo in an effort to win the June 18 byelection in a constituency they have never represented.
Those volunteers are trying to identify all the NDP-friendly votes they can in Tuxedo in an effort to elect Carla Compton, a hemodialysis nurse who used to live in the constituency and ran there previously in 2019, when she finished third behind Stefanson and Liberal candidate Marc Brandson.
Compton, whose candidacy was announced the same day as Premier Wab Kinew called the Tuxedo byelection, said she doesn't expect to sit at the cabinet table if she is elected on Tuesday.
"I can bring my experience from the front lines of health care to the government's table, even in the capacity as a backbencher," Compton said in an interview on the Charleswood side of Tuxedo constituency.
Compton said she benefits from Premier Wab Kinew's personal popularity, which remains strong eight months after the 2023 general election.
At the same time, Stefanson's departure has deprived the NDP of the greatest asset they had last fall in Tuxedo — a very unpopular incumbent.
The PC candidate in the byelection, family lawyer Lawrence Pinsky, is trying to motivate conservative voters by drawing attention away from Kinew to his party's traditional ideological positions, which include a focus on public safety and provincial finances.
In phone messages and campaign materials, he also has attempted to portray the NDP as providing shelter to "extremists" who seek to defund police or espouse lopsided ideological takes on the Israel-Hamas conflict.
"I see a provincial government that's really separating people, that's doing terribly on the economy. I see a world that's gone a little bit upside down," Pinsky said in an interview outside his campaign office in North River Heights. "I see Manitoba having a brilliant set of capital assets — its people — and it's being mismanaged."
With the B.C. NDP and B.C. Conservatives neck and neck heading into election day on Saturday, there are also a record number of Independent candidates who — if voted in — could hold the balance of power in a minority government scenario. British Columbians have only elected one Independent MLA in the last 60 years. Vicki Huntington won a seat in 2009 and was re-elected in 2013. But University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford said the situation could be different this election cycle. Of the 40 Independent candidates running, six of them are incumbent MLAs, who carry the benefit of name recognition in their community. "So we've got Independents in this election who I think we could deem to be viable shots at actually winning a riding, which is not normal," Telford said. "They're still long shots, but they are certainly plausible candidates."
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