Ladies and gentlemen of voting age, please turn your attention to the centre ring…

If there’s one thing that we in the news business wish for any election, it’s that the campaign is competitive and voters have multiple, viable options when it comes time to cast their ballots.

That is certainly what I wished for in this year’s Winnipeg mayoral election: a ballot with two or more competent candidates — including incumbent Scott Gillingham — that offered contrasting visions for the future of the city.

Unfortunately, this time we didn’t get competent or viable. Instead, we got a clown show stuffed with candidates for mayor who have demonstrated a stunning capacity for self-inflicted wounds.

It all started when mayoral candidates Kevin Klein and Mike Vogiatzakis both alleged they had been asked by each other’s campaign to step down to give the remaining candidate a better shot at defeating Gillingham.

Both claimed they were offered some sort of incentive to leave the race, which is illegal. Vogiatzakis claimed Klein’s people offered him a paid position on the Winnipeg Police Board; Klein said Vogiatzakis’s campaign offered him a job in the mayor’s office.

Vogiatzakis threatened to file an official complaint with the city clerk’s office about the alleged job offer. After being a willing participant in the allegation circus, Klein hilariously suggested he wasn’t “going to get into a grade school, recess type of politics.”

And then, Klein decided to throw more gasoline in the fire.

On Monday, Klein said he was approached in 2022 by the Progressive Conservative party about stepping down from the mayoral election to give Gillingham, a bona fide PC supporter, a clearer path to a victory over former mayor Glen Murray.

What is so sad about all these allegations is that they have effectively made the mayoral election a one-horse race.

Gillingham already has a huge advantage as the incumbent. However, any shot that Klein or Vogiatzakis had in authoring a historic upset has been crushed under the weight of their collective lack of judgment and maturity.

It should be said that politicians and political parties have, on occasion, tried to get one candidate to drop out to help another candidate. However, it most often happens — or so the stories go — in leadership or nomination votes, the kind of political battles where any hint of altruism has already been surgically removed.

Winnipeg voters wanted serious people with serious ideas. Instead, we sent in the clowns.

But two long-shot mayoral candidates trading inducements to drop out of a civic election they have little, if any, hope of winning? If any of it is true — and operatives from both campaigns have already confirmed that exchanges did take place — then it has revealed both Klein and Vogiatzakis to be arguably unfit for the mayor’s office.

First, it’s not entirely clear that Klein and Vogiatzakis on their own had a real chance of toppling Gillingham, or are competing for the same voters. The former is a pretty conservative newspaper editor, former city councillor, MLA and cabinet minister. The latter is a small businessman which, it could be argued, could be shorthand for conservative.

Would the departure of one candidate automatically mean more support for the other? Doubtful, in its underlying thesis. And pointless, given what we know about voter intentions.

In pre-election polling, nearly half of respondents claimed they were undecided about who to vote for. That isn’t a seismic survey result, given that more than half of Winnipeg’s electorate don’t vote in any municipal elections.

Of decided voters, Gillingham had the support of 55 per cent, with Klein at 23 and Vogiatzakis at 11. Even though math here is neither precise nor particularly consequential, it would seem to be a bit of a long shot.

The further allegation that a cabal of clandestine conservatives asked Klein to step aside in 2022 to ensure Gillingham defeated former mayor Murray, who is profoundly loathed in right-of-centre circles, is just as unbelievable.

Klein finished with 28,806 votes, well behind winner Gillingham (53,663) and second-place finisher Murray (49,272). Gillingham won even without Klein dropping out, but even if he had, it’s not even remotely clear Gillingham would have reaped the majority of the benefits.

One final note on Klein.

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In the midst of all these allegations, his newspaper, the Winnipeg Sun, published a guest essay arguing that residential school atrocities, as identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, did not happen. Klein claimed he has not been involved in operational decisions at the Sun during the campaign and further claimed he will divest himself of the newspaper should he win the election.

The explanation is ludicrous. Anyone who reads the Sun knows that guest essay was on brand for a publication that is frequently adversarial to Indigenous issues. And the question of whether he approved the article is moot; it’s his newspaper.

All that Klein and Vogiatzakis have done over the past week is fatally wound their own campaigns and — in the process — denied Winnipeggers a competitive election. Something that will likely discourage a lot of people from voting in an election already afflicted with low turnout.

As is the case with most elections, Winnipeg voters wanted serious people with serious ideas. Instead, we sent in the clowns.

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.