The Selinger Era

Greg Selinger pretty much had the advantage in terms of winning the NDP leaderdship from the beginning. After Andrew Swan bowed out, the momentum tilted towards Selinger even more. What Steve Ashton did was campaign hard, gain membership and keep some excitement in what many believed was a forgone conclusion. Organized labour used its slate to ensure it was a foregone conclusion by using their reserved slate of delegates to massively support Selinger. Perhaps they feared Ashton was too much of a gamble compared to the more drab and centrist Selinger.

So now we have the Greg Selinger era.

Aside from the chaos of the H1N1, Selinger has a number of changes to make in his cabinet, Hydro board and in his personal staff. He will probably keep much of the Doer team in place but he has to find a strong person to replace him in Finance and a replacement for Oscar Lathlin.

That is only a small amount of spaces for change unless some of the cabinet is leaving politics and first stepping down from cabinet.

Rumour is that there are two cabinet people who may be stepping down.

They are:

Dianne McGifford

That leaves an opening in Advanced Education.

Dave Chomiak

That leaves an opening in Justice.

I have heard no confirmation of either.

My guess is that we will see Bill Blaikie added to cabinet but beyond that, it gets fuzzy. Jennifer Howard comes to mind.

There may be a few people left on the sidelines after this wondering if they will ever get a chance in cabinet. I imagine that there might be one or two that might be a bit upset.

This is one of the main issues about a long serving government. The beginning of the end for the NDP in the 1980s was not keeping everyone happy in their caucus.



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Swan Fall and Down to Two

Free Press photo of Swan and his supporters and withdrawal from the race

Now that Andrew Swan has stepped aside and supported Greg Selinger, it has turned into a dog fight between the Selinger and Steve Ashton.

The Free Press has tracked delegate support and says Selinger has the most as well as momentum. Still, Ashton continues to close the gap with some of the large ridings selecting his people.

Some seem to think that no matter what happens, the NDP will depart from the direction that Doer took. It seems that the fear in some quarters of the NDP is that Ashton will be the biggest change the party can make.

The leadership will be decided October 17. The results of the Probe Research poll said the NDP remain at 45% in support but this might not last. The poll was speculative as was the musing about a snap election. I don't know that we will get a full grasp of the NDP's selection of leader for a while. If they do go for a snap election, it may backfire on them as it would be a rejection of their fixed election date legislation.

The NDP will have some serious thinking to do about what their strategy should be following the leadership race.



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NDP Leadership Race

The Manitoba NDP leadership race is on. The date for the convention is October 17.

The deadline for signing new members is September 17. The new legislative session starts September 14.

So far there are three viable candidates who have announced. They are Andrew Swan, Steve Ashton and Greg Selinger.

Of all the candidates, Selinger has probably the greatest advantage as one of the most senior ministers. After that, Swan with the generational change has strength. Ashton can say he is the most experienced of the candidates.

At the moment, it looks like Selinger has lined up the most supporters followed by Swan.

One sad note is the fact that no women have joined the race. I wonder why this is so.

So far we have not heard too much of the vision and policies the leadership candidates espouse. We'll see if anyone breaks away from the risk adverse policies of Gary Doer.



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