Another week, another MLA has announced that he won’t be seeking re-election. Yesterday Gerald Hawranik, MLA for Lac du Bonnet since 2002, announced he won’t be seeking re-election; bringing up the total of MLAs not seeking relection to 8 (5 PCs and 3 NDPs).
I'm hesitant to say this puts the riding back into play. Hawranik won the riding with over 58% of the vote and a over 2000 vote lead. But the combination of redistribution, the riding lost a bit of the more PC southern edge, and the lack of an incumbent could put it back in play.
The reason I'm hesitant to say that it will be in play is because the NDP will be facing much more serious challenges in current NDP ridings they need to keep in order to stay in government. So I'd be very surprised if they decided to pour a lot of time and energy in trying to get a seat that at best has a 50% of swinging in their favour. As with most provincial elections, you win Winnipeg you win the keys to Broadway. So I don't expect too much of a push from the NDP outside the perimeter.
In other PC Party news, Interlake candidate John Zasitko has been dumped by the party. I had my suspicions that something was brewing as for the past week and a bit my traffic sources from google had contained things such as John Zasitko disallow PC candidate and the like.
There hasn’t been much said about why Zasitko was dropped so I can only speculate as to what might have happened. The only thing I know about him is that he emerged as the surprised winner of a highly contested nomination in April last year. Plus, the letter from Senator Plett simply stated : "on the basis of its review of identified shortcomings with regard to your participation in the party's election preparedness program and campaign planning efforts."
If anything it sends a clear signal to other candidates that the party is taking election preparation seriously even if the election is still 8 months away. It will be interesting to see how things play out in this situation as Interlake is a riding that is probably high on the priority list for the PCs. What’s left to see if a second nomination race will take place and regenerate energy or if party HQ appoints a candidate with the results of the grassroots snubbing him or her.
As for the NDP, they have nominated Paul Beckta in Charleswood and two incumbents have been re-nominated. Rob Altemeyer in Wolsely and Rosann Wowchuk in Swan River.
The Liberals have nominated Twyla Motkaluk in Burrows. She is the author of the blog http://ibitchabout.wordpress.com/ .
It makes one wonder what the point of a nomination contest is in the first place if a successful dark-horse candidate can have their nomination revoked on the basis of something as vague and subjective as "identified shortcomings". Just let Senator Plett (or whichever Tory bigwig) make the pick and eliminate the pretense that riding associations call the shots.
ReplyDeleteFour NDP MLAs aren't running again, often missed is Flin Flon MLA Gerard Jennissen who isn't running again. Along with McGifford, Hickes and Brick that brings the total to four. And we still haven't heard from Robinson. There are also rumours that there could be contested nominations for Koreniowski and Wiebe.
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