Tuxedo byelection has all 4 Manitoba parties eyeing Winnipeg constituency that has only ever voted Tory blue

Posted on June 12, 2024 by Peggy

In the 43 years since the formation of Tuxedo as a provincial electoral district, voters in the affluent Winnipeg constituency have only elected two MLAs, both of them Progressive Conservatives who served as premier.

The first was Gary Filmon. The second was Heather Stefanson. Together, they won 13 general elections or byelections in Tuxedo.

Only two of those contests were close.

On election night in 1988, Liberal candidate Jasper McKee came within 124 votes of defeating Filmon, the PC leader and premier designate. McKee’s strong showing was bolstered by the popularity of Liberal leader Sharon Carstairs, whose party served as the official opposition to a Filmon-led PC minority government.

In 2023, the NDP narrowly missed capturing Tuxedo. NDP candidate Larissa Ashdown came within 268 votes of defeating Stefanson, whose personal popularity had plummeted following six previous victories where her average margin of victory was 2,372 votes.

Ashdown did not appear to campaign vigorously in that race. But now that Stefanson has resigned and the PCs remain without a full-time leader, the New Democrats have deployed significant numbers of volunteers in Tuxedo in an effort to win the June 18 byelection in a constituency they have never represented.

Those volunteers are trying to identify all the NDP-friendly votes they can in Tuxedo in an effort to elect Carla Compton, a hemodialysis nurse who used to live in the constituency and ran there previously in 2019, when she finished third behind Stefanson and Liberal candidate Marc Brandson.

Compton, whose candidacy was announced the same day as Premier Wab Kinew called the Tuxedo byelection, said she doesn’t expect to sit at the cabinet table if she is elected on Tuesday.

“I can bring my experience from the front lines of health care to the government’s table, even in the capacity as a backbencher,” Compton said in an interview on the Charleswood side of Tuxedo constituency.

A woman standing at an orange podium smiles as she is surrounded by people clapping. — NDP candidate Carla Compton, centre, is a hemodialysis nurse. She previously ran in Tuxedo in the 2019 general election, finishing third behind the PCs and Liberals. (Travis Golby/CBC)

Compton said she benefits from Premier Wab Kinew’s personal popularity, which remains strong eight months after the 2023 general election.

At the same time, Stefanson’s departure has deprived the NDP of the greatest asset they had last fall in Tuxedo — a very unpopular incumbent.

The PC candidate in the byelection, family lawyer Lawrence Pinsky, is trying to motivate conservative voters by drawing attention away from Kinew to his party’s traditional ideological positions, which include a focus on public safety and provincial finances.

In phone messages and campaign materials, he also has attempted to portray the NDP as providing shelter to “extremists” who seek to defund police or espouse lopsided ideological takes on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“I see a provincial government that’s really separating people, that’s doing terribly on the economy. I see a world that’s gone a little bit upside down,” Pinsky said in an interview outside his campaign office in North River Heights. “I see Manitoba having a brilliant set of capital assets — its people — and it’s being mismanaged.”

Despite the ascendance of both Filmon and Stefanson to the premier’s office, Pinsky said he does not see getting elected as a PC MLA in Tuxedo as a means of becoming the party’s leader.

The PCs will choose a permanent successor to Stefanson in 2025.

“I see baptism as happening centimetre by centimetre, not metre by metre,” Pinsky said, suggesting he has much to learn about politics if he is elected.

A woman in a blazer and jeans stands on a boulevard, with a group of volunteers in the background. — Liberal candidate Jamie Pfau is a foster parent advocate, PhD candidate and entrepreneur. (Bartley Kives/CBC)

Manitoba’s Liberals, who were reduced to a single seat in the legislature last fall, have selected a candidate with a lengthy and varied resume to run in the Tuxedo byelection.

Jamie Pfau is an advocate for foster parents and a PhD candidate in community health sciences who also runs a cabin-rental business in Lac du Bonnet, Man.

She’s pitching her political independence as an asset to voters who might be tired of the PC-NDP dichotomy in Manitoba. She said she will be able to return phone calls more quickly and respond to them more easily than members of the two larger parties could.

“If the PCs or the NDP are elected, it will be another backbencher and absolutely nothing will change. The government has already been formed,” Pfau said in an interview on the western edge of River Heights.

“This is an opportunity for Tuxedo to really take advantage of this byelection and vote for somebody who is a fierce advocate, a researcher and the strongest candidate.”