Just under 11,000 people have taken out memberships in the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba in time to vote for next month’s leadership race — up from 2,200 members the party had when the race was launched last summer, party officials said Monday.
The party did not release a breakdown of how many memberships were sold by each of the two candidates before the Feb. 28 cutoff. Neither did the candidates’ teams.
Obby Khan, a member of the legislature and former cabinet minister, said in a prepared statement that he had received “deep and broad support from across Winnipeg and rural Manitoba that I believe will lead us to victory on April 26.”
A spokesman for Wally Daudrich, a hotel owner and longtime party board member, said the Daudrich campaign had sold “about the same” as Khan’s campaign.
The Tories are rebuilding after losing the 2023 election and the resignation of former premier Heather Stefanson. Members will vote, primarily by mail-in ballot, and a winner is to be declared April 26.
One political analyst said while the contest is not easy to predict, Daudrich has an uphill battle against Khan, who is viewed as the establishment candidate with the backing of many caucus members.
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That’s partly because new party rules cap the number of votes in any one constituency, so candidates have to garner broad support across the province, said Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.
“And if I look at Mr. Daudrich’s greatest areas of appeal, they are in the north probably and in the more conservative southern (rural) parts of the province,” Thomas said.
Khan, who represents one of the two Winnipeg seats held by the Tories, has pitched himself as a big-tent PC member who has won two elections and is already in the legislative chamber.
Daudrich has promised a more conservative approach. He has said he would shrink the size of government and eliminate the provincial fuel tax. He has called himself pro-life, although he added that he would leave decisions on abortions and other issues to grassroots members.
Another political analyst, Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, said no one should count Daudrich out.
The last Tory leadership race saw Stefanson barely win over Shelly Glover. Like Khan, Stefanson had the advantage of a seat in the legislature and the backing of many caucus members. Glover hit the hustings and sold thousands of memberships. There were 25,000 members by the time the vote was held.
“Daudrich might be under the radar,” Adams said.
The lower party membership numbers this time around are likely due to a few factors, Adams said — most notably that the Tories are now in Opposition and more people are willing to buy memberships when a party is in power.
The biggest procedural change from the last race has seen the party move away from a one-member-one-vote system where every vote has equal weight.
This time around, the party has adopted a point system that limits the impact of constituencies with large membership numbers.
The new system allots one point for every vote a candidate receives in constituencies with up to 100 voting members. After that, a sliding scale kicks in. A constituency with 400 voting members is worth 200 points and no constituency is worth more than 500 points.
That can make it more difficult for an apparent outsider to round up enough new members in enough areas to win a race, Thomas said.
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