Former Liberal party leader campaigns for ‘close family friend’ PC MLA

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This article was published 24/09/2023 (755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The sight of a former Manitoba Liberal leader hitting the campaign trail in support of a Progressive Conservative candidate may have raised some eyebrows Saturday.

But Rana Bokhari and Obby Khan insisted Manitobans shouldn’t read too much into the fact she canvassed with him in the provincial riding of Fort Whyte.

“Obby is a close family friend. I’ve known him for years,” Bokhari told the Free Press Sunday.

“Rana and I have been friends for over a decade,” Khan said in a separate interview.

Bokhari, the Liberal leader from 2013 to 2016, posted an Instagram photo which showed her and Khan posing on a sidewalk, while going door-to-door ahead of the Oct. 3 election.

Bokhari said her support for Khan was not an endorsement of the Tories nor any of their policies, but about representation.

“I support (Obby) as an individual,” she said. “This is not about partisan politics.”

Bokhari and Khan are Muslim and of Pakistani descent. Both have made history in their political careers.

Khan was the first Muslim elected to the Manitoba legislature. Bokhari was the first woman of colour and Muslim woman to lead a political party in Canada.

She resigned as Liberal leader after failing to win a seat in the 2016 election.

Khan said Bokhari had earlier told him that she would like to canvas with him in this year’s campaign. He said the pair’s appearance together was a sign of Manitoba’s diversity, and it sent a “powerful” message of the direction the province is headed.

“Representation really matters,” he said. “Working together really matters.”

“Representation really matters. Working together really matters.”–Obby Khan

Khan, then a sitting MLA, didn’t publicly support a candidate when Bokhari unsuccessfully ran for Winnipeg mayor in 2022.

In this campaign, he has been the public face of the Tory party’s pledge to expand parental rights in public schools. Bokhari declined to give her opinion on the proposal.

She said she has been an advocate for human rights, and nothing has changed about what she has said in the past.

“People know where my policies lie,” the lawyer said.

In response to the parental rights promise, the NDP previously accused the PCs of blowing a “dog whistle” over LGBTTQ+ issues, while the Liberals claimed the Tories were and tapping into “moral panic” whipped up by the spread of false information.

Bokhari set her Instagram account to private after receiving some negative comments about the photo of her and Khan. She found the reaction to be offensive.

“Is he not allowed to have his own community support him?” said Bokhari. “I’m just not going to waste my energy on a Sunday afternoon engaging with people because I took a picture.”

She noted she attended a celebration for Khan when he won the Fort Whyte seat in a 2022 byelection.

‘Not a big deal’: Liberal Reaves

Willard Reaves, the Liberal candidate in Fort Whyte, branded Bokhari’s canvassing with Khan as a “photo op” designed to stir a reaction.

“To me, it’s not a big deal,” said Reaves. “I have other things to concentrate on.”

Trudy Schroeder is the NDP candidate in the south Winnipeg constituency.

The race is essentially a rematch of the byelection narrowly won by Khan. Reaves finished second in that vote. Schroeder was third.

Khan and Reaves both once played football for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

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Bokhari described herself as non-partisan in this election. She said she plans to donate money to support the campaigns of individual Liberal and NDP candidates in other constituencies.

“I support people across the board,” she said. “I’m just not doing the partisan thing.”

She expressed support for Shandi Strong, the Liberal candidate in Fort Garry, and Trevor Kirczenow, who is running for the Liberals in Springfield-Ritchot, on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

Both candiates are transgender.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @chriskitching

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.