NDP carry two byelections

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People head into Glenelm School Tuesday morning where a polling station for the Elmwood byelection was located.

After three decades of sitting in the opposition benches in Ottawa, Bill Blaikie will finally get a taste of power, joining the Doer government as the new MLA for Elmwood.

Blaikie easily outpaced three other candidates — winning more than half the votes cast — as the NDP won both byelections Tuesday, as expected.

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Premier Gary Doer joins Bill Blaikie's victory party. (BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

In The Pas, Frank Whitehead, a political adviser to Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Ron Evans, also won handily.

Blaikie said Tuesday night  he looks forward to taking a seat in the Manitoba legislature and learning the ropes of provincial politics.
"I’ve been an observer of it but never a participant," he said.

Blaikie also said the Disraeli Bridge project, the big issue in the campaign, is at the top of his agenda. He dismissed claims the Doer government did not care about keeping the bridge partially open during its upcoming construction.

Premier Gary Doer said the byelection victories put "wind in the sails" of his government as it heads into budget day today. Neither he nor Blaikie would talk about the possibility of Blaikie being named to cabinet.

Meanwhile, Progressive Conservative Leader Hugh McFadyen took solace in the fact that the NDP’s margin of victory in Elmwood was lower than in past elections.

The NDP have won more than 60 per cent of the vote in the constituency for at least the past three elections until its "dramatic slide" to just above 50 per cent Tuesday night, he said.

"Clearly there’s a pretty dramatic shift against the NDP, certainly in Elmwood, and it’s consistent with what we’re seeing across the city of Winnipeg," McFadyen said.

The Liberals had said they were running neck and neck with Blaikie in Elmwood, but wound up finishing third. Their candidate, Regan Wolfrom, said he felt the party has a good base in the riding and that the Grits "know what it takes to win now."

"We can make it happen," he said from his campaign headquarters.

Elmwood had been without an MLA since early September when NDP MLA Jim Maloway resigned to run federally. The vacancy in The Pas occurred last November when longtime MLA and cabinet minister Oscar Lathlin died.

Both constituencies are traditional NDP strongholds. Maloway won 61 per cent of the Elmwood vote in the 2007 general election, while Lathlin polled 68 per cent of those who cast ballots in The Pas.

Whitehead, a former chief of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, finished well ahead of aboriginal craft and fashion designer Edna Nabess, who carried the Progressive Conservative banner, and Liberal candidate Maurice Berens, a Norway House high school teacher.

"I believe this party (the NDP) is the only party right now that will respond to the needs of our constituency," Whitehead said Tuesday night.

"I’m very excited about... being part of a bigger machinery that makes laws and has policies that contribute to all of Manitoba. I’m going to be part of that. And for me that’s the biggest thing I’ll ever do in my life."

Voters outside the Polson School polling station on Munroe Avenue Tuesday afternoon said Elmwood has a tradition of voting NDP and that nothing happened during the campaign to change that.

"The NDP is for the working man," Ralph Anderson said. "The Conservatives are for the guys who try to make people work. The Liberals are somewhere in the middle."

With the two victories, the NDP has 36 seats in the legislature, while the Conservatives have 19 seats and the Liberals two.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca
larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca