Tom Lindsey is in, Clarence Pettersen is out, and the hotly contested NDP nomination race that made it so is the talk of the Flin Flon constituency.
Pettersen’s loss of the NDP nomination for the 2016 election is a bitter pill to swallow for the one-term MLA and his supporters.
Under Pettersen’s watch, more provincial investment has been pumped into this constituency (over $170 million, according to the MLA’s figures) than in any other four-year period in recent memory, if ever.
Despite that triumph, some party members wondered what share of the credit went to Pettersen and what share went to Premier Greg Selinger and his NDP government.
Others acknowledged that in raw dollar terms, Pettersen’s tenure was unmatched – they just didn’t view a new ER here or a revamped stretch of Highway 10 there as Flin Flon’s most pressing needs.
Pettersen was visibly disappointed last Friday, Dec. 11 when he delivered his concession speech before party members in the lower level of the Flin Flon Public Library.
He congratulated Lindsey while criticizing the nomination as “not really democratic” since only 269 people in a riding of thousands participated.
There was nothing undemocratic about it. Party members were invited to choose between Pettersen and Lindsey, and chose the latter candidate.
Why change paddles midstream, so to speak?
NDP members had their reasons, but it’s clear that Pettersen’s past calls for Premier Selinger to step down did not sit well with many in the party establishment.
One party member told me the Selinger episode “blew up in his [Pettersen’s] face” when the premier survived a leadership contest earlier this year.
At that point, the member told me, it was difficult to see how Pettersen could regain the ear of a premier who had (temporarily) expelled him and other party dissidents from caucus meetings.
For his part, Pettersen has said he and Selinger are on good terms.
Speaking with Winnipeg’s CJOB radio station this week, Pettersen said his decision to support Theresa Oswald in the party leadership campaign, not the union-backed Steve Ashton, cost him union votes.
But it’s not clear how significant a factor unions were in Pettersen’s defeat. Party members voted anonymously and all of their ballots were destroyed after the tallying.
That said, it’s no secret that some, perhaps many, local union members were disenchanted with Pettersen and viewed Lindsey, a long-time union activist, as a union-friendlier alternative.
Yet Lindsey is not pigeonholing himself as a one-issue candidate – that issue being unions – and is eager to talk about matters such as the plight of First Nations.
Pettersen said he “absolutely” does not support the transition to a new NDP candidate and is now pondering whether to run as an independent in April.
The two big questions for the party: How many of Pettersen’s supporters disagree with the candidate transition? And would the Pettersen-as-an-independent scenario split the left-wing vote?
Backers of the other main parties, the Progressive Conservatives and Liberals, see an opportunity in all of this drama to finally paint this riding a colour
other than orange.
I don’t think that’s likely. But despite all of the dollars pumped into the constituency in recent years, it seems more possible now than it has been in recent memory.
Who says politics is boring?
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
