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Gary Doer’s Manitoba
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Monsieur |
| Last Edited | Monsieur Dec 23, 2008 09:46am |
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| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Thursday, June 28, 2007 03:45:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | With his May 22 election victory, Gary Doer is only the second premier in recent Manitoba history to win three consecutive majority governments. The first was Duff Roblin back in the 1960s. In fact, since the election of Ed Schreyer in 1969, the New Democratic Party has been in office for all but a dozen years of the past four decades — nearly enough to consider the NDP Manitoba’s natural governing party.
In general terms the secret of NDP electoral success here has been to do just enough to sustain support from the province’s working class and poor, while avoiding major confrontation with its business class such as would scare off large numbers of middle-class voters.
The dilution of social-democratic principles did not come so easily to Doer’s predecessors, Ed Schreyer and Howard Pawley. Doer, on the other hand, is a quintessential small-“l” liberal. The man doesn’t have a socialist bone in his body, a characterization he would enthusiastically endorse.
Doer has led Manitoba’s New Democrats for nearly two decades — enough time for him to reshape the party in his image. The NDP here has, to a large extent, become Manitoba’s liberal party, almost wiping out the hapless Grits. It has also been adroit in taking on Conservative issues like tax cuts and fighting crime, leaving the Tories with little to campaign on. As Donne Flanagan, a top official in the premier’s office, has admitted in writing, Today’s NDP, as the party likes to call itself, follows a strategy of “inoculating” itself against criticism from its traditional foes. |
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