Emma Durand-Wood Wins Elmwood-East Kildonan City Election

The shocking death of Jason Schreyer in April at age 57 triggered a byelection in Elmwood-East Kildonan. Time to mourn the man was short as representation in the riding was essential with issues such as closure of the Louise Bridge awaiting an elected Council member to advocate on behalf the area people. An open seat for mayor council usually draws a larger number of candidates. Incumbency often sees low numbers of interested parties. Higher profile candidates feel they can't compete with the present Councillor because that person has their faces on every bus bench and have been the name attached the community grants for organization in that area.

Sadly, openings on Winnipeg  Council often only come up when someone passes away. It has happened a number of times. It is up for debate about civic elections could be more competitive. Term limits seems like a blunt instrument to do. Ball selection might be more helpful. It would still have difficulties when it came to overcoming incumbency but could attract more interest. Allowing those who have elected office elsewhere to run for positions without having to resign first would be interesting. For example, in the New York's mayor race, one candidate is in higher elected office and running for mayor. They won't have to resign unless they win the race.

In an open seat, many candidates have no name recognition in the city. And sometimes the ones that do, still can't win. There have been a few media people who ran for office and didn't succeed. Announcing early seems to help more than hurt. In this most recent byelection, the first two candidates to announce seemed to have the best outcomes. In this case it was Emma Durand-Wood and Abel Gutierrez were pretty much first out the gate and that is the order they placed in the election.

For whatever reason other candidates took too long to get their campaigns going. The most obvious candidate was Jason Schreyer's assistant Chris Sweryda who oddly said his background was road safety researcher waited too long to get the Schreyer family endorsement for carrying on the work of the former Councillor. He also waited too long to announce he was running and had other Council support.

NDP and Processive Conservatives also had some favourites although party politics is nominally not in Winnipeg politics. It is a fabrication though as most Councillors have some connection to the major parties. And not just parties but organizations, businesses, unions and elected officials endorsing their chosen people.

In Elmwood though, those groups waited too long and diluted their support. One of the candidates Braydon Mazurkewich collected a number of PC and conservative endorsements. He was noted by some to be Maple MAGA and was seen in pictures with Make America Great Again ball caps. It would appear he wanted too long as well to announce because some conservative support had been extended elsewhere. 

Two city employees ran. Carmen Prefontaine appeared to have the support of at least one Councillor and union support. The other city employee Kyle Roche didn't appear to share any union or elected official support. Neither did Zekariah Salahadin. It should be noted that elected officials, unions and businesses who don't reside in a ward have no votes. Ultimately, it is about how many people who actually are registered to vote who come out. And in Elmwood, it was only 16% of those people.

I'll say one thing about civic elections and that is the new candidate is sworn in right away. Emma Durand-Wood voted no on the Route 90 widening today. It was not enough to veto it. The mayor said it was something she campaigned on and he respects that. The priorities on Council are Peguis and Kenaston expansions. None of those proceed without federal help and the city has a long list of projects they want from the Feds with no strings attached.

There doesn't seem to be a progressive movement like there was in the 1990s that endorsed several candidates such as Danny Vandal and Greg Selinger and helped elect Glen Murray. It did break up the gang of 18 who represented the conservative elements of Council and who tended to caucus in private to set agendas which included some massive road infrastructure.

There doesn't seem to be a progressive movement as there was in the past. Council is less obvious about their affiliation except those with NDP ties. Many don't like party politics in city hall but in would be a mistake to think that some Councillors are not Liberals, NDP, PC or Greens. The general election is next year and as has been demonstrated west of us, there is a lot of motivation for change.

Byelections can also sometimes signify nothing at all. Given the low voter turnout, it may just have been who got out there earlier and with a clearer message.