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2014 Winnipeg municipal elections
December 20, 2013 - 12:16am
Well, Orlikow is weighing his options when it comes to running for mayor & was a vigorous critique of the city's latest budget. Orlikow is a red Liberal from River Heights and a consistent Katz critic from the left-leaning side of city council. Aside from JWL, he's the only left-leaning contender who's seriously mulling over a mayoral run in 2014. Most potential candidates seem to be from the right.
So, your thoughts on the 2014 municipal elections? Will any council seats be in play? Who'll really be running for mayor? How will it all turn out?
I'm quite happy to be represented by Councillor Orlikow. He is also likely the only mayoral candidate who will advocate to build rapid transit along the rail line where it belongs, where the other candidates will probably build the detour through Parker or not at all. I'm not sure how serious this is, and even so, I'm not sure Orlikow has the oomph! needed to run for the top job. I've heard that Fielding and Havixbeck on the right end of the spectrum are interested in running. Unfortunately, I could easily see Katz being re-elected. I don't see anything to indicate that Judy has learned her lessons from what went wrong in 2010, and I don't see that the left has done anything to reach out to the swing voters in the suburbs who decide elections in this town. As for council seats, someone will have to run in St. Boniface now that Vandal will step down to run for MP. Elmwood should be the easiest pick-up opportunity for the left, followed by Point Douglas. Unfortunately, I think the NDP will try and co-opt the same process that has not only failed outside of staunch-NDP wards, but will be even more challenged considering the battering the NDP brand has taken in the court of public opinion.
Which particular suburbs do you think Judy will have to perform well in to win the mayoralty?
I was particularly thinking of anything outside what I consider to be the NDP bubble of central and north Winnipeg. Basically anything outside of the areas that routinely elect NDP councillors with regularity.
It sounds like from that article it's going to be Judy W-L again. I probably won't vote, I don't think I voted for her last time.
I hope the NDP doesn't follow up with their disastrous attempt in 2010 to nominate councillors. I don't think that worked for anyone, and the NDP is even less popular now after the PST debacle.
Harvey Smith is 77, I wonder if he will retire. If so, it will be interesting to see who the left puts forward for his seat and how it all gets hashed out, given the gong-show of last time (where the NDP endorsed a different candidate seemingly to push him out, Harvey decided to run anyways and won, and the official NDP candidate came in 3rd).
It will be interesting to see how the establishment left in this city deals with Wyatt in Transcona.
I seem to remember Louise May didn't do too bad in St. Norbert last time, I wonder if that might be in play, especially given Swandel's recent erratic outbursts.
At the end of the day, someone's going to have to put forward a better vision for the city. It's abundantly clear that the current city planning regime isn't working, and more efforts need to be put into transit and increasing density than into cookie-cutter $350K mini-mansions on the outskirts of town.
Gerbasi for mayor?
Somebody has to stop that mad fiscal axman, with his crazy ass ideas like shutting down the Arlington Street bridge and axing inner-city services. There's enough class warfare against the working poor as is.
I don't know that she's interested, for one. One thing that is in her favour should she run is that she has is the only sitting councillor who has been consistently after Katz' mis-steps. The one issue I have if she does run is that I'm not sure she would be able to connect with people who live outside of her area. Indeed, her backing the rapid transit line through the Parker wetlands is quite problematic and indicative of this thinking.
In terms of vision, I think planning should be the key plank. Lack of planning underpins every major problem this city faces, from urban poverty to urban decline to suburban sprawl to cracked streets to traffic congestion to rapid transit to lack of affordable housing to cost over-runs and the list goes on.
How do Orlinkow and Judy W-L compare? Orlinkow is a Liberal, but his uncle was a prominant federal New Democrat. If they are fairly similar its probably best only one run to avoid vote splitting and capitalize on the the fact that the right seems to be fractured. Did Orlinow vote for the most recent city budget, which gives the YMCA tens of millions of dollars to build a rec centre and pool? Not only does that give the YMCA an advantage over other private rec and pool facilities, it burns money that the city could use to upgrade its own rec facilities.
I'm guessing that Judy and Orlikow would have pretty similar platforms, and Orlikow was critical of both the city budget and the YMCA deal. The one difference I can see (which is a huge issue for me) is that Judy will probably support the rapid transit detour, while Orlikow is in favour of going down the rail line. Indeed, without Orlikow I would have a hard time voting. I can see someone on the right advocating to cancel construction of the second phase of rapid transit and being absolutely horrible on every other city issue, or someone on the left having an otherwise soild platform except pushing a flawed alignment for rapid transit that can only alienate people and further discredit the idea of rapid transit throughout the rest of the city.
Orlikow voted against the capital and operating budgets.
From The Freep
One could compile quite a list of crap that Katz has caused for Winnipeg through stupidity or lack of action. I would like to see a community-based to start, aggressive campaign that pulls no punches in terms of how bad he is for the city, and everything he's done wrong or things he should have done but hasn't. I think it needs to be nasty and truthful. Nothing less is going to wake up the zombie-drones in the suburbs. I think the message right out of the gate should be that it's time to get rid of Katz. And after that, start a positive campaign that gives people a solid, no-brainer alternative to vote for.
Agreed.
Judy may have given more critiques than proposals, but her campagin was nowhere near hard-hitting and specific enough to truly paint the pseudo-populist Sam Katz as an incompetent in the publics' eyes.
Orlinkow and JWL both seem like decent, progressive candidates. Of course, at this point, almost anyone is better than Sammy.
John Orlikow on the budget (Nov. 29, 2013):
Orlikow also offers prolific commentary on the issues and news sections of his site. Seems like he's taking Katz head on.
Something interesting about Orlikow's ward. This is the same ward that elected Donald Benham. It also elected Garth Steek and Brenda Leipsic. It includes the conservative LindenWoods, and is home of the PC Leader and also the province's only Liberal MLA. In other words, it swings pretty wildly. I wonder if Orlikow is a bridge who can connect the kind of city we want for Winnipeg with what average suburbanites outside Elmwood, the central portion, or the North End are thinking, and perhaps he is a bridge in a way that Gerbasi or Judy cannot be.
Probably have to analyze the riding level polling results a little better, but part of me thinks that low turnout, a lack of evident ideological identifiers for City Council candidates (unless the Dippers endorse you, that is) and social liberals in River Heights outvoting the more outer suburban neighbourhoods would contribute to his wins.
Wow! A poster mentioned that Harvey Smith is 77 and still on council. Great! Thirty years ago I covered city hall for Wpg Sun (in its early post-Trib incarnation) and Harvey was one of my faves. Courageous and dedicated. Re-elect Harvey!
What'd you do when the wingnuts took over the Sun?
Orlikow's opponent in 2010 was quite known for his affiliation with the right wing, to the point that people on the doorsteps mentioned this when I was doing drops for him.
Also, there's an unverified twitter account that's probably the real JWL's.
Wasylycia-Leis strong in survey Katz tanks in test of mayoral field
Hope Probe has a likely vs unlikely voters model.
Detailed brakedown.
Judy does well in the Northeast (48%), Northwest (49%), and Core (70%) areas and among the 55 plus crowd (53% - which is good, as old people turn out to vote at higher rates). If see increased her support 6 percentage points she'd have a lock on the mayoralty in any field.
Gord Steeves performs a solid 59% in southeast Winnipeg.
She's really dominating the core & it's somewhat interesting, as I've also been following the Toronto mayoral race a little - where another member of the club of past or present NDP MPs (Olivia Chow) is running. Same pattern of solid support in the central city holds for Chow in Toronto, which is surprising given how much more genetrified TO's downtown is, while her average supporter is classified as making less than $100K/yr (while hard-right Rob Ford's average supporter has a household income below $40K/yr). In Winnipeg, by contrast, Judy draws strong support among low income households (58%) - Probe doesn't list support by income for the other candidates.
Thinking about it, as things stand right now, I would probably support Orlikow over Judy, even if it were to split the vote and elect a right-winger. For one, Orlikow has a good position on rapid transit, while I can imagine that Judy would simply go along with the detour. But more importantly, Orlikow has been at the council table, he has a solid voting record, and he knows very well what is going on at City Hall. I'm not really sure what Judy's been up to for the last 3 years, I'm not sure if she has learned anything from the disastrous 2010 campaign, and I don't get the sense that she has any strategy beyond coasting on, "I'm Judy and everybody likes me, so vote for me."
Of course, that poll doesn't take into account the speculation around Orlikow, so we don't know how that will play out should it come to pass.
Good to know John Orlikow is pro-snow clearing. Probably not that unpopular in Winnipeg, but given an EPC dominated by the likes of fiscal axman Russ Wyatt & Sam Katz, supporting basic municipal public services is something.
Yeah, it always blows my mind how in a city that is under snow for half the year that it always manages to plough through the snow removal budget by the end of November.
Orlikow confirms that he will run
We have another poll:
Paging other Winnipeggers, how do you think the rapid transit fiasco is going to play out in this election? 3 candidates have already openly disagreed with the alignment (Orlikow wants to go down the rail line whereas Havixbeck and Fielding want to stop it altogether) and I think that Katz is the only one who will defend the detour.