Playing one-on-one

Unlike previous civic elections, there’s no free space on the bingo card this time around.

Every council candidate in the city’s 15 wards faces at least one challenger as Winnipeggers go to the polls on Oct. 28.

During the last vote in 2022, Couns. Markus Chambers and Devi Sharma ran unopposed in their respective St. Norbert-Seine River and Old Kildonan wards. In 2018, Coun. Janice Lukes was acclaimed in Waverley West.

While seven of the wards boast at least four candidates, three others — Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood, Point Douglas and Daniel McIntyre — have only two each.

Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood

Coun. Evan Duncan is seeking a second term in one of the city’s western-most wards. Standing in his way is Dennis Bayomi, who has previously campaigned as the Green Party candidate in provincial and federal elections.

The ward has not had a councillor run for re-election in 20 years.

In 2010, Bill Clement, who served as the area’s councillor for 27 years, died. Paula Havixbeck served a single term before running for mayor in 2014, coming in sixth.

Marty Morantz was the area councillor from 2014 to 2018, before jumping to federal politics, where he served as a Conservative Member of Parliament until last year.

In 2018, Kevin Klein was elected, before running for mayor in 2022, coming in third.

Duncan was elected in 2022 with 52 per cent of votes cast in his second try (he came in second to Morantz in 2014).

The incumbent said turnover has been hard for the ward’s constituents.

“They want someone to be a consistent voice for them at city hall,” the 43-year-old said.

He said resident concerns in 2026 are similar to what he heard in 2022: preserving the character of the community, be it through tree planting or recreation options, and questions about public safety.

“The ward, although they might not experience some of the socioeconomic and social issues that are going on out there, they’re very concerned about it,” Duncan said. “They don’t want to see people out on the streets. They want to make sure that people are safe and property is protected.”

It hasn’t been easy being the new guy, he said, comparing it to the first day of school, and said he still wishes he had “more strongly advocated for immediate investment into my ward” in the early days. But he believes the consistency that would come with a second term would make a difference, and said he’s watched council become more united over the past four years.

“We’re also on the same page now, where you would have seen a lot of divisiveness before, with public safety,” he said. “There’s no more, ‘defund — or abolish — the police.’ People want community policing. They want to see, they want to know the police officers in their neighbourhood. We are working together on that.”

Incumbents, historically, are more likely to win in Winnipeg elections. Bayomi, 67, said he is not necessarily running to win but to share ideas about how to make Winnipeg better.

“(There’s) the idea that certain wards like this one are basically like David and Goliath, there’s no chance to win against an incumbent,” Bayomi said.

“So I’m not going in with the expectation that this is going to be a race that’s really quite winnable.”

He shared a similar sentiment last year, when he ran federally for the Green Party in the Winnipeg West riding, and told the Free Press he did not expect to come close to winning. He said he ran to ensure topics like climate change were kept in the conversation and not drowned out by U.S.-focused hot-button issues.

Bayomi did come in last that year, receiving 0.8 per cent of the vote. It’s been a different experience this time, knocking on doors as a civic candidate, independent of a party.

“When you knock on a door, and people aren’t asking what party you are with, the door doesn’t quickly close as soon as you tell them what party you’re with, whether it’s orange, red, blue, or green,” he said. “I’m finding that to be kind of an interesting side effect of going door to door and having really, I would say, valuable conversations with people.”

Establishing more neighbourhood associations that could build camaraderie and serve as liaisons between residents and all three levels of government is a top priority for him.

In an attempt to avoid neighbourhood rifts and save paper, he has foregone lawn signs entirely, opting for ads on recycling bins instead, with the slogan “What if, Winnipeg?”

He waited and watched for weeks, and when it became clear no one else was going to run against Duncan, he threw his hat in the ring.

“Nobody wants to see that,” he said. “I think even the incumbents would like to see a bit of a report card coming from the voters.”

Daniel McIntyre

Incumbent Cindy Gilroy has spent the last term focusing on outreach — sharing the work she’s doing for the ward on social media and connecting with residents on big issues.

She’s running against Fred Morris, who has run for city council four times previously in different wards.

Seeking her fourth term, Gilroy said she wants to focus on issues that haven’t gotten the council-wide attention they deserve: funnelling more funding into recreation services, improving the city’s response to climate change, traffic calming initiatives, and improving “major issues” with the Transit network overhaul.

“I think that I’ve learned a long time ago that as a city councillor, you need everyone else’s vote to get something done,” Gilroy, 54, said. “You can sit there and make all the promises you can, but you need to make sure that you get the votes in order to get the money you need to do stuff. You have to work a lot at building connections with your councillor colleagues to get things done.”

She said her advocacy — along with “motions after motions” — were key to a number of improvements made over the last four years, including changes to guidelines around vacant and derelict buildings and a budget amendment that raised the number of firefighters hired by the city.

Like Bayomi, Morris said he was compelled to run when he saw Gilroy was the sole registrant in the central Daniel McIntyre ward.

“I felt that I should throw my hat in the ring and give the people a choice, because (acclaimed candidates) are never a good idea, and there’s certainly a few files that this council the last four years has had trouble with, let’s just put it that way,” Morris said.

The 75-year-old previously worked in delivery and fast food businesses, and has written articles as a community correspondent for the Free Press.

Transit is his top priority: the overhaul, which changed routes and stops, was “too much change too quickly,” he said, and more stops need to be brought back quicker. He would also advocate for fast-tracking full shields for bus drivers.

While he voted for Portage Avenue and Main Street to remain closed in the 2018 plebiscite on the issue, now that it’s open, he wants to see the concourse be saved, rather than decommissioned.

“It’s a great thing for the city to be able to go from one building to the other, especially in the winter time, without going outside, and we have a beautiful concrete mural down there that is priceless, and we should be really promoting it as a tourist attraction,” he said.

Point Douglas

Vivian Santos seeks a third term in the north Winnipeg ward.

Challenger Mark Requinta declined to speak on the record with the Free Press.

Santos said she would focus on park redevelopment projects should she be re-elected.

“We do have some older, aging parks in Point Douglas,” Santos, 45, said.

“In the first couple of terms, I was able to work more on the inner-city and revitalize a lot of the inner-city parks, and now, some of the parks that are in Meadows West and Garden Grove and Tyndall Park, I’m going to be solely focusing on that area.”

Part of what inspires that focus, she said, is concerns about affordability she’s heard at doorsteps. People want to see more free and affordable recreation options, she said.

“When you invest in the community, and they see these new amenities, a lot of residents take pride in that,” she said.

She said she appreciated Requinta running against her and considers it a chance to hear criticism of her time in office and improve in the future.

“It’s not easy to put your name on a ballot, it’s good for democracy,” she said.

“It’s good for me, too. I take that as a challenge.”

Advance voting for Winnipeg’s municipal election is underway at different locations until Friday.

malak.abas@winnipegfreepress.com