Too close to call in Assiniboia

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This article was published 03/10/2023 (748 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg constituency of Assiniboia was too close to call Tuesday, with the NDP candidate leading over the incumbent Tory minister of seniors and long-term care.

At 11:15 p.m., Elections Manitoba, reporting just seven of 18 polls, had the NDP’s Nellie Kennedy with a 562-vote lead over Progressive Conservative incumbent Scott Johnston in the swing riding on the western edge of the city.

Losing the seat would be a blow for the Tories, but it would be a moral, rather than a functional, one. A win for the PC incumbent would do little to dent the NDP’s majority victory. Liberal Charles Ward was running a distant third.

A NDP win would be a reversal. In the 2016 and 2019 elections, the party lost Assiniboia to the PCs by roughly 16- and nine-point margins, respectively. Johnston won with 44 per cent of the vote in 2019.

NDP candidates and their supporters began filing into a ballroom at the Fort Garry Hotel around 8 p.m. Supporters were dressed in orange ties, orange skirts and T-shirts bearing the union logos of International Association of Fire Fighters or Unifor. Cheers grew louder in the room throughout the night.

Johnston was first elected to the legislature in 2016, as the MLA for St. James. He then switched constituencies and won Assiniboia, where he’s been a lifelong resident.

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Prior to entering politics, Johnston was the president of the J.F.J. Agency brokerage firm and a former chairperson of the board for the St. James-Assiniboia School Division, where his three children attended.

Kennedy has lived in Assiniboia for more than a decade with her husband and two children. She is a community services disability worker. A mental-health advocate, she also co-founded and is the volunteer director of the Postpartum Depression Association of Manitoba.

A long-established riding, Assiniboia is bordered to the north and to the west by the city’s limits; to the south, mostly by Portage Avenue; and to the east, largely by Moray Street.

Since the early 1960s, Assiniboia has been represented by each of the province’s three major parties, swapping hands several times. In 1999, NDP Jim Rondeau won the riding from the PC incumbent by just a handful of votes. He held it until 2016, when Tory Steven Fletcher was elected.

marsha.mcleod@freepress.mb.ca

Marsha McLeod
Investigative reporter Signal

Marsha is an investigative reporter. She joined the Free Press in 2023.

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