A tough choice for new PC leader

Opinion

Obby Khan has hard decisions to make. Fresh from his razor-thin victory in the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party leadership contest, he must now chart a course toward the goal of restoring his party to being a competitive contender in the next provincial election.

It won’t be easy. The new leader has inherited a party that is deeply in debt, deeply divided among its members, and continues to suffer from reputational harm caused by terrible strategic choices made during the 2023 provincial election campaign.

Those factors make it very likely that, if a provincial election was held today, Khan’s Tories would be crushed by Wab Kinew’s New Democrats and would likely return to the Manitoba Legislative Building with even fewer seats than they currently hold.

How does Khan avoid that likelihood? What can he do to ensure his party avoids a second, or even third, consecutive term on the opposition benches?

His first step was last week’s apology for his party’s refusal, when it was in government, to search the Prairie Green landfill site for the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran. Many have questioned the long delay in making the apology, but it is clear that Khan is attempting to turn the page on the many mistakes made by the Tories during the 2023 campaign.

Khan’s next step will be far more difficult. He must decide what role, if any, Wally Daudrich will have in the PC Party going forward.

Kahn won the just-concluded leadership contest by scoring more points than Daudrich under a formula used by the party that awarded points based on the number of votes cast by members in each provincial constituency. Daudrich received 53 more votes in total from party members than Khan, however, and also received the majority of votes in more than half of the 20 constituencies currently represented by Tory MLAs.

Based on those results, it could be persuasively argued that Daudrich has earned, and deserves, a prominent role in the party. The problem, however, is that he made a number of statements during the leadership contest that would harm the party’s chances of victory in the next election, and would likely cause tremendous turmoil within the PC caucus and membership.

For example, he argued that homelessness is a choice and joked that releasing polar bears in downtown Winnipeg would solve the problem. He also supports so-called “parental rights” policies — a euphemism for anti-LGBTTQ+ policies — and is an avid fan of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Despite Daudrich’s history of taking controversial and/or offensive positions on issues, he is demanding that Khan give him the party’s uncontested nomination in the upcoming byelection in the Spruce Woods riding. It’s one of the safest Tory constituencies in the entire province, but also one in which several local party members would be interested in seeking the nomination.

If Daudrich is given the Spruce Woods nomination, or wins it via a contested nomination process, he will almost certainly win the byelection. He would then become the riding’s MLA and have an immediate platform to broadcast his incendiary ideas.

That would please the PC party members who voted for him in the leadership contest, but it would be a public relations disaster and vote-loser for a party that must regain the support of centrist Winnipeg voters in order to have any hope of winning future elections.

Just days into his new role, Khan is trapped in a “Catch-22” situation. His refusal to give Daudrich the Spruce Woods nomination — or, his refusal to sign Daudrich’s nomination papers should he win the nomination — could improve the PC Party’s chances of winning seats inside the Perimeter. Doing so could trigger a nasty conflict within the party, however, potentially causing it to splinter into two parties, neither of which would be strong enough to seriously challenge the NDP.

Viewed from that perspective, the new leader’s decision regarding Daudrich’s potential nomination in Spruce Woods is really a decision about the direction of the Manitoba PC Party, and the future of the party itself.

Khan has repeatedly said he wants to build a “big-tent” PC Party. The Daudrich issue is an opportunity to prove to Manitobans that he is serious about achieving that goal.

Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon.

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