Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives are slated to announce a new party leader following a six-month campaign that was overshadowed during its home stretch by the federal election.
On Saturday afternoon at downtown Winnipeg’s Radisson Hotel, the Official Opposition party is slated to reveal whether it will be led by Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan or Wally Daudrich, who owns a hotel and ecotourism company in Churchill.
This race will determine the full-time successor to former Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson, who stepped down as party leader months after her PCs lost the 2023 provincial election to Wab Kinew’s NDP.
Following her departure, the party appointed Lac du Bonnet MLA Wayne Ewasko as interim leader and decided on a lengthy contest to select a new permanent one.
The party gave prospective contestants six months to sign up for the race and another six months to campaign, partly to avoid a repeat of the party’s 2021 leadership contest between Stefanson and former Conservative MP Shelly Glover.
Plagued by voting irregularities, that race led to a court challenge from Glover, who has since vowed to form an alternative party to the Manitoba PCs.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says the length of the PC leadership campaign may not have benefited the party, despite the good intentions behind it.
The federal election likely sucked up most of the political oxygen in this province, he said.
“I think people sort of forgot that there is a race going on,” Adams said in an interview this week. “I think people were lulled by the very long leadership campaign.”
Adams said Ewasko “did a fairly decent job” as interim leader, but
