Wab’s (and Brian’s) way: how the NDP won the Manitoba election By: Dan Lett Posted: 10:48 PM CDT Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023

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This article was published 03/10/2023 (1081 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The NDP’s historic Manitoba election win Tuesday night was forged by the hard lessons of a bitter byelection defeat nine months earlier.

When Progressive Conservative premier Heather Stefanson called the Kirkfield Park byelection for Dec. 13, 2022, her Tories were at a low point in public support. The NDP had a chance to take back a seat it held during the halcyon days of Gary Doer’s administration.

However, tactical errors in voter identification and a flawed effort to pull the vote on election day proved to be a blessing for PC candidate Kevin Klein, who won by just 259 votes.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew and his team tried to put a positive spin on the result, but it was hard to erase a harsh but undeniable reality. The NDP were not ready to compete in a general election.

The challenge was to find a way to transform the disappointment from Kirkfield Park into a new and more potent campaign strategy.

“Kirkfield Park was a pretty tough pill to swallow,” Kinew said in an interview the day before the general election. “Everyone involved really believed that on the organizational side, we need to get much better.”

Enter Brian Topp.

When Kinew unveiled Topp as the NDP’s campaign director at the October 2022 party convention, it was headline news.

Topp has, at one time or another, had a hand in NDP campaigns in most every province. He was a key figure in Rachel Notley’s remarkable 2015 win in Alberta and was one of the principal architects of the historic 2011 federal campaign that had Jack Layton’s New Democrats surge to 103 seats and status as the House of Commons’ official Opposition.

Topp, Kinew and his senior advisers set about identifying two key innovations that had to be in place before the official Manitoba campaign began: a revamped and more aggressive effort to identify and get NDP supporters to advanced polls; and tasking incumbent MLAs to support candidates in ridings the party wanted to take from the PCs and Liberals.

By far and away, the most impactful change was the decision to start the “pull the vote” efforts at the start of advanced polling, and not just on election day.

Pulling advanced vote impactful

All political parties work hard to identify voters through canvassing and phone banks.

Voters are given a score: one for a core, slam-dunk supporter to five being ‘no chance in hell.’ When it’s time to vote, campaign volunteers reach out repeatedly to the ones and twos, and maybe some of the threes, to ensure they follow through on their previously stated voting intentions.

However, the NDP had never put much effort into pulling the vote during the advance voting period.

Topp said for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, New Democratic parties in many provinces do not try to mobilize core supporters when advance polls open. That’s a cause for concern, because conservative parties have long-started their efforts with the first day of advance voting and won close battles on the strength of those advance ballots, which are counted last.

Just like in Kirkfield Park in 2022.

“Did you know we were winning the byelection until the advance was counted?” Topp said. “And then it went below the waves. And that was because we were still trying to get our vote out on election day and the other side was getting their vote out over over multiple days.

“So it was a matter of being mindful that there’s no such thing as election day anymore. It’s election week.”

“It was a matter of being mindful that there’s no such thing as election day anymore. It’s election week.”–Brian Topp

The NDP started to pull the vote Sept. 23-24, and carried it through to the end of advanced voting.

Although the actual results won’t be known until after the votes are counted, the record advance poll results — where more than 200,000 Manitobans voted early, a nearly 100 per cent increase over 2019 — certainly suggested the NDP achieved its goal.

Incumbents paired with new candidates

Topp said the other decision made by the campaign team was to partner all of the NDP’s 18 incumbent MLAs with one or more new candidates running in Tory- or Liberal-held electoral divisions. Topp and Kinew said the strategy did cause a bit of concern but, ultimately, everyone decided to pitch in.

“Everybody was very professional,” Kinew said. “There might have been a little bit of, ‘Well, you’re asking a lot of us.’ But everyone, to their credit, stepped up.”

The final piece of the NDP campaign strategy was the decision to go big — and early — one month before the campaign officially started.

The PC government had dominated the headlines in the spring, and into the early summer, with a free-spending budget and a blitzkrieg of funding announcements that ended in July, when the 60-day blackout period on government communications kicked in.

While the Tories patted backs and shook hands over 10-figure spending announcements, the NDP were curiously quiet, almost ceding the news cycle to the Tories and their gestures of largess.

As it turned out, the New Democrats were waiting in the long grass for the Tories to finish their news release blitz. Then, in the first week of August — a full 28 days before the official 28-day campaign was set to begin — the NDP pounced.

The strategy, Kinew said, was to get a bunch of pre-emptive pledges out to the electorate. To that end, Kinew surprised with vows to cut gasoline taxes and freeze Manitoba Hydro electricity rates — two ideas that seemed out of character for New Democrats.

Topp said the plan all along was to get out in front of some pain points that were going to be exploited by the Tories. Affordability was going to be a key issue, and the gas tax and Hydro freeze were meant to at least plant the idea the NDP would not be looking to jack taxes or utility rates.

‘Had the ice to ourselves’

It was a risky strategy, but looking at the election results, it seems obvious now the flood of NDP early announcements caught the Tories flat-footed.

“In essence, we had the ice to ourselves for a month,” Topp said. “And we were grateful to have the ice to ourselves. We knocked down some of the pillars of the Tory campaign.

“They were hoping to get people to believe that this was another (former premier Greg) Selinger campaign and that Wab was going to bump the PST again. We had a chance to show them Wab was not that.”

The other part of the go big and go early strategy was delivering the big speech.

On Aug. 16, Kinew held court at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg for an extended and deeply personal speech. At one point, the NDP leader suggested the reason the PC party was attacking him so robustly was he “sometimes wears my hair in a braid.”

That line, and indeed the whole idea for the speech, was devised by Kinew and Topp a few weeks earlier over dinner.

Topp said even though it has fallen out of style somewhat, he has long believed a big, powerful speech can still resonate. Particularly in a campaign where the Tories were obviously going to attack Kinew on his past run-ins with the criminal justice system.

‘Give the speech of your life’

“I said to Wab, ‘I think this calls for a really big speech. I think you need to give the speech of your life.’ He was already there.

“I said, ‘You’re the first (First Nations) leader who has shot at being premier, and you know what (the Tories) are going to say to try and stop you. And you need to give people a reason to vote for you.’”

The change in campaign strategy. The early start to the campaign. The speech.

All these things helped build the foundation for the NDP’s historic victory Tuesday night.

For Kinew, it was the culmination of a years-long personal campaign to rise above his past runs-in with the criminal justice system and the inherent skepticism non-Indigenous voters have about the idea of electing a First Nations premier.

”You need to give people a reason to vote for you.”–Brian Topp

Through it all, Kinew said he tried to weather the storms while remembering what he now considers to be the most important lesson he’s learned since becoming NDP leader six years ago.

“I think patience is a virtue in politics, because persuasion doesn’t happen overnight, and rightfully so. We’re talking about an awesome task that you’re being asked to do, in terms of leading a province.

“So Manitobans are right to be cautious and judicious and so, on the flip side of that, if you’re asking for their support, you better be patient about putting in the time to earn it.”

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.