Okay, a week has passed, most of the races potentially impacted by mail-in ballots have been decided, and since we just celebrated Halloween, what better time to assess a very scary election result for the NDP?
I was going to do a more general post with my random election thoughts but since at least four people are talking about it (just kidding – I’m sure everybody in the NDP and many beyond are talking about it!), I’ll jump to the big question right away – should Ryan Meili remain as party leader after this election?
I’ve been on record since Cam Broten won the NDP leadership in 2013 that I wanted the NDP to get back to where they were when Brad Wall won – basically 20 seats – so they’re a stronger opposition and with more resources available to build.
(Given the results for Dwain Lingenfelter and then Cam Broten as the previous two NDP leaders, I sadly had to expand my criteria to “..and I want the leader to retain their seat.”)
Lo and behold, Ryan gave everyone an early Halloween week scare and nearly lost *his* seat (he was actually behind at the end of election night but luckily, mail-in ballots put him over the top.)
Ryan was saved by mail-in ballots but as one Twitter commenter said, “It’d almost be easier for the NDP if he lost since they’d know they were going back to *another* leadership race. Now, there’s going to be potentially a lot of controversy as people debate whether to keep Ryan as Leader or not.”
Full disclosure: I’ve supported Ryan since he first ran for leader in 2009 and ever since, in a variety of roles including as a volunteer, as part of his team during his previous leadership runs and as a donor.
But I was not part of the team running the “big” campaign during this election or in contact with anyone who was. So these observations are my own thoughts or what I’m hearing from various quarters (others in the NDP, traditional media, social media) but are not based on anything I heard from Ryan or his immediate circle.
As I said, I’ve supported Ryan for a decade but I also want to be fair as I assess what the best course of action for the party is (maybe I’m turning into more of a “crest on the front than number on the back” guy?) 😉
REASONS RYAN SHOULD REMAIN AS LEADER
* He *did* retain his seat which the past two leaders have failed to do and though that’s an admittedly low bar, it’s still something to celebrate when the Sask Party clearly uses their huge financial advantage to target party leaders (and I don’t think the NDP should be deciding party leaders simply based on who is already in the safest seat. If so, Meara Conway might catapult from rookie MLA to next party leader!)
* The party doesn’t need the expense, distraction and potential infighting that another leadership race could cause, especially when they should start planning for the next election immediately.
* On a related note, a leadership race would mean introducing a whole new leader to the province who would face the same inevitable barrage of attacks, real or exaggerated, just as Ryan did. This is going to happen whether it’s Trent Wotherspoon, Nicole Saurer, or the guy who runs the phone bank at NDP HQ who becomes leader. Ryan’s already faced all of the Sask Party’s attacks so they likely wouldn’t have the same impact if he gets to lead the party into another election in 2024 plus he has the advantage of an electorate that already knows him, his family, his story to a certain degree.
* I have no idea if this is true but someone who is in the know said Ryan has has surpassed the past two leaders in fundraising during his time as Leader.
* I guess this is a weird “he should stay” reason but it’s so hard to know the true impact of Covid on this election – from how it may have affected volunteer turnout to just the general sense that in a very unsettled time, voters are much more likely to stay with what they know and are familiar with (the BC NDP gaining a huge majority during their own election a week ago could be spun as a pro-Ryan point too – the opposition Sask NDP managed to return a “push” instead of allowing the governing party to grow, even with all their financial and incumbency advantages.)
* speaking of, I was shocked when I saw someone say this is the first election since 2007 that the NDP managed to knock off an incumbent Sask Party MLA. I think they got three (?) including a Cabinet Minister. Almost unbelievable if true but again, more small victories to celebrate and build on.
* in terms of spinning this result as a positive, I saw someone who’s been a Ryan supporter longer than I have say that Ryan is also the first leader to increase the party’s seat count from the previous general election since 2003 which is a fair point and very true. But again, the Sask NDP had 13 seats at dissolution so, while technically true, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say they “gained” 3 seats from the last general election result (10 seats won) even if both Lingenfelter and Broten saw their seat counts drop from the previous general election when they were the leader.
REASONS RYAN SHOULD NOT REMAIN AS LEADER
* It is extremely rare for a governing party to get so many strong majorities as, no matter where they are on the political spectrum, parties tend to get arrogant and entitled after about 10 years. The Sask Party might not have been defeatable with their strength in rural Saskatchewan but the stage had been set for some big gains in the cities and that simply did not happen.
* Hindsight will allow everyone to pick what they saw as the faults with the NDP campaign and I’m sure lots of blame to go around on various policy and strategic decisions that didn’t work out as hoped. No matter how these decisions were arrived at, Ryan is the leader so he ultimately has to own that. (Here’s one tiny example – I thought bringing back the STC bus provided a great visual for that proposal. But using one of the giant old ones led to easy attacks from the other side – “oh, look, STC still only has a handful of riders” or “You want to compete with the small businesses that sprang up to replace STC? What don’t you want the government to control?” What if instead, the NDP got an extenda-van and decked it out in updated STC branding as a proof-of-concept since that’s a direction STC was heading anyhow – smaller vehicles to be more efficient? Could’ve been an easy way to show the NDP was looking to the future instead of the past.)
* There are some who feel the NDP needs to move to the centre and that Ryan is too left wing to be electable. (Personally, I think that’s insider ball and the majority of voters don’t really pay attention to where someone is at on the political spectrum. For me, I think it’s more about personality, track record and how you communicate the benefits of your policies which lets you connect with and sell your ideas to the majority of voters. I mean, universal healthcare is one of Canada’s most cherished ideas and it came from one of Canada’s most left-wing leaders of all-time.)
* Some blame Ryan for the controversy in Regina Walsh-Acres and how that may have impacted wider NDP fortunes. I don’t know exactly what happened there but I do know that people do not get let go – from workplaces, from organizations, from board of directors – without good reason and without a lot of prior steps before the ultimate one of cutting someone loose. It’s not a perfect analogy but I see a lot of parallels with what happened with Erin Weir – a leader decided to cut a sitting/former MP/MLA loose due to some internal issues that aren’t public knowledge. Weir, a lifelong supporter of the NDP, could’ve easily run as an independent and possibly split the vote to be a spoiler in his riding. He chose not to do that out of the interests of the wider party and though the subsequent NDP candidate in that riding was not successful, Weir choosing not to run at least gave the next candidate the best chance of that happening by putting the interests of the party above his own self-interest.
* Even among those who like him, some feel that Ryan fits best in a more cosmopolitan area and he simply can’t connect with rural people in Saskatchewan. Again, I think this comes down to messaging which I think the NDP tried to do – Ryan growing up on a farm, Ryan being a doctor who had worked in rural Saskatchewan – but again, just couldn’t seem to get traction on.
* This isn’t Ryan’s strong suit as he can be relatively quiet and I honestly believe he truly wants to do “positive” politics. But I really wish he would channel the anger of the electorate more – people who are mad about Sask Party blowing the resource boom and their corruption scandals and even their handling of the Covid pandemic (I mean, we had a *Doctor* as our leader during a global pandemic and still couldn’t get some extra votes/seats because of that?!?)
I’d like to have seen more of the Ryan in the clip below because I think emotion generally reaches people better than logic in politics…
So, in the end, what’s my verdict? I obviously have a strong bias towards keeping Ryan as leader given how long I’ve supported him and how many strengths I think he has compared to other potential leadership contenders.
To remove my deep-seated pro-Ryan bias, I tried to imagine how I’d feel if everything had gone exactly the same but Trent Wotherspoon (who Ryan beat for the leadership most recently) or Cam Broten (who beat Ryan last time) were the leader. But honestly, it’s too hard to imagine that hypothetical since the world is very different and the variables changes too much in a world where Cam Broten manages to keep his seat four years ago or Trent Wotherspoon is the one carrying the banner this year.
So yes, while fully admitting my bias, my hope is that the party decides to keep Ryan on as leader for all the reasons I listed above. An old lion like Dwain Lingenfelter couldn’t get it done. A young buck like Cam Broten couldn’t get it done. But of the three, Ryan has arguably had the most success and moved the party forward more than anyone else in a generation.
Having said that, I’ll also say that, should the party see fit to move on again, I *really* hope they move in a completely different direction because what they’ve been doing for the past few elections clearly isn’t working.
The party is already sitting with 5 male and 8 female MLAs after this election. So why not completely embrace that and find a woman to be leader? Maybe Meara Conway going from rookie MLA to party leader isn’t so far-fetched after all?!? 🙂
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