Incumbent in Winnipeg's mayoral race has yet to make a campaign promise

1 billet of the way of life through and through Winnipeg's mayoral run period, incumbent Scott Gillingham has yet to make an election promise.

Gillingham, the former pastor and St. James councillor, is seeking a second term as Winnipeg's mayor. He registered his campaign on May 1, the first day candidates were permitted to file paperwork that allows them to raise and spend money on their campaigns.

Since then, he's been focused entirely on being mayor and not at all on being a candidate, assuming it's fair to measure the latter performance on the basis of how you tell the public what you intend to do as mayor if you win the next election.

With 25 per cent of the race already over — election day is Oct. 28 — Gillingham says he's too busy being mayor to devote more time telling the public why he should be mayor in the future.

"Obviously, it's a dual role right now, but there's so much going on," he said at the Winnipeg Fire-Paramedic Service academy Monday.

"My capacity is the mayor. We continue to focus on that. We are building our platform, and at the right time, we'll make announcements related to the platform. "

The power of incumbency is exceptionally strong in Winnipeg. The last sitting mayor to suffer an election-night defeat in Winnipeg was George Sharpe, who came up short in a narrow loss to Independent MLA Stephen Juba in 1956.

On paper, Gillingham appears to be the most vulnerable incumbent since Sharpe went down to Juba nearly 70 years ago.

Gillingham squeaked by on election night in 2022 with 27.5 per cent of the popular vote, repelling a comeback bid by former mayor Glen Murray by a minuscule margin of 4,391 votes.

Based on those numbers, it's fair to say Gillingham could be vulnerable in a contest featuring a well-known challenger with high name recognition.

So far, that's not the race unfolding in Winnipeg this year.

Right now, Gillingham faces six challengers. Two of them — Mazher Alam and Joshua Pagdato — are political novices.

The other four have run or attempted to run for office but have not had any success.

Chris Clacio finished last in a field of 11 mayoral candidates in 2022, receiving 0.23 per cent of the popular vote.

Don Woodstock finished fourth out of eight candidates in the 2018 mayoral race, winning two per cent of the popular vote. He then finished ninth out of 11 candidates in 2022 and garnered one per cent of the vote.

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Umar Hayat finished sixth out of eight candidates in 2018 and won one per cent of the vote.

Mike Vogiatzakis registered to run for mayor in 2014 but fell short of the number of valid signatures required to complete the nomination process. He did not file audited campaign expenses and was barred from running for office that year.

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What is missing from the race, so far, is a challenger who has held public office before or otherwise has made a recognizable name for themselves in some aspect of their work or community service.

The 2022 mayoral race wasn't close just because the field was wide open after mayor Brian Bowman's decision to leave politics. It was also close because there were five strong candidates: Gillingham, Murray, then-councillor Kevin Klein, social enterprise policy wonk Shaun Loney and former Winnipeg Centre MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette.

While there's still time in 2026 for a big-name candidate to emerge, the window for fundraising and organizing has become so narrow, anyone who jumps into the race later will face an even more uphill battle against an incumbent.

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Gillingham said Monday the nature of his competition will not affect the way he intends to campaign.

"I asked my campaign team even before the campaign began to be ready for the most difficult slate of candidates and prepare for that," he said.

"We're going to be strategic in the timing of the rollout of the platform and pieces of the platform."

That means it might be some time before the incumbent mayoral candidate makes the first promise of his campaign. Gillingham wouldn't commit Monday to making a campaign promise during the month of June.

That means a third of this race might be over before the incumbent tells the electorate what he intends to do during the next four years.

In a more competitive race, Gillingham would not enjoy this luxury.

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