Daudrich says PCs didn’t want him to win

Wally Daudrich said he’s “not surprised” by the Manitoba Progressive Conservative party’s decision not to let him run for the Tories in Turtle Mountain.

Late Wednesday, the PCs announced that Daudrich “will not be permitted” to seek the party’s nomination in the Westman riding.

“I’m shocked at what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Daudrich told the Sun on Thursday.

Daudrich, who owns a tourism company in Churchill, the former party headquarters in Winnipeg and lives just east of the Turtle Mountain riding, narrowly lost the party’s leadership last year to Obby Khan. Daudrich received more votes, but Khan won because the ballots were weighted by constituency.

Since his December announcement that he would seek the party’s nomination in Turtle Mountain, he had been actively campaigning and selling PC memberships to people in the riding, Daudrich said.

“They looked at the votes and they said, ‘We can’t possibly let Wally win, so we’re gonna disqualify him because the vote is next Saturday,’” he said.

The party’s nomination meetings were originally scheduled for June 13 in Boissevain and Somerset. Mark Custance, a councillor in the Municipality of Two Borders, is also seeking the PC nomination.

Daudrich said he had gone through two rounds of vetting and sold hundreds of memberships for the party.

He said he has “no idea” why he was barred from pursuing the nomination, other than the party didn’t want him to win.

“I was told at the beginning that I have a clear path to run, that I should go through the vetting process. I did all of that and I’ve been working hard for six months and now I’m told I can’t run.”

When asked what he plans to do next, Daudrich said he’s keeping all of his options open.

“I love Turtle Mountain,” he said. “Turtle Mountain is my kind of people, and I’ve fallen in love with the people that I’ve met.”

Daudrich said he believes the decision was made by the party leader and campaign manager.

Khan and party president Peter Smith didn’t grant interview requests on Thursday.

In a statement, Smith said all potential candidates seeking the party’s nomination must meet certain eligibility requirements.

“Mr. Daudrich was subject to certain conditions during the vetting process, of which he was aware,” Smith said. “After repeated advisement those conditions were not met, his application was not entitled to proceed.”

Smith said that Daudrich was informed on Wednesday that he was no longer considered a “potential candidate” in the riding.

The party scheduled the nomination meetings after Doyle Piwniuk, the sitting Tory MLA, announced in November that he would retire from politics at the end of his term.

Piwniuk and Agassiz MLA Jodie Byram didn’t respond to requests for comment on their party’s decision, while Riding Mountain MLA Greg Nesbitt and Brandon West MLA Wayne Balcaen declined interview requests.

Swan River MLA Rick Wowchuk said Thursday morning that the news came as a surprise to him and he was still waiting for an explanation from the party.

“There’s obviously some stuff internally that must have occurred,” Wowchuk said, adding that it would be difficult for him to comment without more information.

“I thought it was all a go and everything and when I saw that (Wednesday) I was surprised,” he said.

“Obviously what happened has been put into careful consideration, and so I look forward to hearing exactly what transpired.”

When asked if he thinks the close results of the April 2025 leadership race had any bearing on the decision, Wowchuk said the goal of the race was to bring the party together, and that’s how he viewed the outcome.

Spruce Woods MLA Colleen Robbins also said it was difficult for her to comment on the matter without more information from the party first.

“I have full confidence in them that they made the decision based on our constitution and rules and stuff, because I know when I ran, I felt it was very good and very fair,” Robbins said.

Robbins won in a byelection last August. Daudrich told the Sun in May 2025 that he asked Khan to give him the nomination in that riding outright, but when Khan said no, Daudrich backed out of the race. At the time, he said he didn’t pursue the nomination further because he had just run the six-month leadership contest.

Robbins said when she’s seen Khan and Daudrich in the same room, they seemed to get along “really well,” and she doesn’t see their public disagreements from the leadership race being an issue with the Turtle Mountain nomination.

“They seem to — after the leadership — get along quite well,” she said.

University of Manitoba political studies Prof. Christopher Adams said the PC party is really made up of two big wings — one in rural Manitoba and one in the urban Winnipeg.

Daudrich has gathered a lot of support from rural Manitoba, he said, while Khan represents the Winnipeg riding of Fort Whyte.

“That division within the party has been there for decades and decades, but I mean something crossed the line (Wednesday),” Adams said.

The party cutting Daudrich off, he added, will not ease the friction between the party’s two wings.

“We’re going to have to see what the blowback is, what might happen,” he said. “I suspect there’ll be some party members who will be very disillusioned by the fact of somebody they’ve supported being blocked from running.

“I don’t think it’s a small thing.”

He said he believes the story about what happened will eventually come out, and that there’s likely something deeper than just “sour grapes” between the two former leadership rivals.

The governing NDP are also likely happy about this decision, Adams said, and might have a “slight advantage” in the ridings they were preparing to target in the next election, which must happen no later than October 2027.

Meanwhile, Custance said he was also unaware of the decision before reading about it in the news, and he was originally supposed to travel to Winnipeg on Thursday to go over the process of the nomination meetings before Daudrich was barred from the race.

“I would say I’m quite surprised,” he said.

The party confirmed no one else is registered to run for the party’s nomination. Candidates had until Tuesday to register.

When asked about him now being the sole PC candidate, Custance said he’s excited to have a local voice back for the riding.

Both Piwniuk and Daudrich lived outside the constituency.

Custance said he’s not celebrating too hard, as he hasn’t been named the party’s candidate and he would also have to run in the general election against candidates for other parties afterward.

In early March, the NDP announced Rick Pauls as its candidate in the riding. Pauls previously served as the mayor of Killarney-Turtle Mountain.

Custance said the PC vetting process had been pretty straightforward. It included filling out a package sent by a committee. The committee also checked social media history and did a credit check.

After he was vetted, the party sent him an email saying that it approved him as a candidate, but it can choose at any time to void that approval, he said.

» alambert@brandonsun.com