Desperate NDP holds off challengers

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/06/2017 (3045 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whenever a byelection takes place, you can be sure of two things.

First, only a fraction of the people that vote in general elections will show up for a byelection.

And second, despite the fact that voter turnout is low, people will try to make a big deal about the results.

Pundits and commentators, including many toiling in the salt mines of daily journalism, will try to find meaning in the results. Many pointless questions will be asked: who got the most votes, how many more votes did they get than the second-place candidate, how do these results compare to the last general election results?

Here’s the inside scoop: the only result that matters is who won. And Tuesday night in Point Douglas, NDP candidate Bernadette Smith retained a strategically important seat for her party in a byelection that saw less than half the normal turnout for a general election. At press time, less than one quarter of all registered voters in the riding had showed up to vote.

Liberal candidate John Cacayuran finished a strong second and Tory hopeful Jodi Moskal a distant third.

Ignoring the actual vote totals for a moment, what does the Point Douglas byelection result say about the state of Manitoba politics?

First and foremost, that the NDP is highly motivated to keep what few seats it has left. Given the long history of support for the NDP in Point Douglas, the final result was really no surprise. And yet, all the available evidence was that the NDP pulled out all the stops to retain this seat. Losing it was simply unfathomable for a party that remains, even with Smith in the fold, a shadow of its former self.

Desperation can be a powerful motivating force for people in politics. And although the NDP is currently short on experience, broad public support and political acumen, it seems to have a nearly endless reserve of desperation. New Democrats will need that going into the 2020 election, where they will have to defend seats that will be much more vulnerable than Point Douglas.

The result will likely be positioned as a moral victory for the leaderless Liberal party. Again, finishing second in a byelection has no real empirical value, but it’s a lot better than finishing third. Just ask the Tories about that.

There is no escaping the fact that there were quite a few frowny faces in the Tory fold when it was clear that Moskal — by all measurements a very promising candidate — would finish well back of her opponents. The byelection campaign started in Toryland with hope that a rather pathetic performance by the NDP in its first year back in opposition would help convince voters in the riding to shun their traditional party of choice.

And Moskal had the added advantage that she was supported by a party that had more money and resources at its disposal than either the NDP or the Liberals, both of which are mired in debt from the 2016 provincial election.

Unfortunately, the timing of the byelection and a sub-par performance by Premier Brian Pallister and his government did Moskal no favours.

Pallister decided to wait until the very last moment to call the byelection, necessary after New Democrat MLA Kevin Chief retired from politics in early January. Had Pallister called the byelection right away, he likely would have put the NDP at even greater organizational disadvantage. By waiting, he put his own party at a disadvantage.

As soon as Pallister called the byelection, a legislated blackout on government news and announcements was imposed. This prevented the Tory government from doing or saying anything that might have swayed the vote in Point Douglas. It also, however, prevented the Tories from defending themselves outside the legislature for unpopular budget decisions.

Remember that the Pallister government has been on quite a controversial budgetary tear over the past few months, rationing funding to health and education, laying off hundreds of civil servants and launching a plan to close hospital emergency rooms. This was the baggage that Moskal carried into Point Douglas.

Outside of debate in the legislature, the government was prevented from making any pronouncements on these or any other issues that arose. Like a funding cut to the Point Douglas Women’s Centre. It was a decision made months before the byelection, but raised rather strategically by the NDP in the heat of the campaign. The Tories could only sit back and take their lumps for having denied funding to a key Point Douglas community resource.

Things only got worse when Pallister did try to lend Moskal a hand. Like the time the PC party posted a YouTube video showing Pallister speaking to Moskal’s campaign volunteers. In the video, he celebrates the nobility of his government’s decision to make only token increases to the minimum wage, while criticizing provinces that have launched plans to bump it up significantly over the next two years.

Going into arguably the poorest riding in Manitoba to argue the virtue of a lower minimum wage is hardly a winning political strategy.

Badly timed, poorly executed and badly messaged. If Moskal wants to know how she went from great blue hope to third place, that pretty much covers it.

Lessons will most definitely need to be learned here. The New Democrats learned they can still hold a riding when their backs are against the wall. The Liberals learned they still have a modicum of political currency in this province. And the Tories? Well, they learned they need to be much better in 2020 than they were in the byelection if they hope to enjoy a long run of majority mandates.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca