Manitoba’s progressive conservatives have selected Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan for Little Fort to serve as the new party leader.
After a six -month leadership contest, Khan defeated Wally Daudrich, owner of a hotel and ecotourism business in Churchill, in a vote made through tickets by mail. Khan won 2,198 points on the weighted electoral ballot at 2,163 of Daudrich, the official opposition party announced on Saturday at the Radisson Hotel in the center of Winnipeg.
Khan’s victory gave him 50.4 percent of the points available.
The leadership contest was caused when the former Prime Minister of Manitoba, Heather Stefanson, resigned as party leader in early 2024, months after her PCs lost the provincial elections of Autumn 2023 against Wab Kinew’s NDP.
After his departure, the game appointed Lac Du Bonnet Mla Wayne Ewasko as an interim leader and decided a long contest to select a permanent new one.
The party gave the possible contestants six months to register in the race and another six months to campaign, in part to avoid a repetition of the disputed 2021 leadership career of the party between Stefanson and former conservative deputy Shelly Glover.
Khan, who was first chosen for the Manitoba Legislature in a 2022 election, was backed by 10 of 20 members of the PC Caucus before Saturday’s vote.
During the long leadership career, he positioned himself as the best capable of taking the party from the opposition of the political desert on the basis that he already has a seat in the legislature.
Khan made few policy ads during the campaign. He promised to look for more public-private partnerships within the medical care system and provide the municipalities with an unprecedented part of income from provincial sales taxes.
Khan becomes the first Muslim, as well as the first Canadian of an ethnic origin of southern Asia to lead the progressive conservatives of Manitoba.
Daudrich, who plans to run in the next Manitoba selection in Spruce Woods, did not receive endorsements from any PC Caucus member. At the beginning of the campaign, he described some MLA of PC as lazy and refused to appoint the elected officials in question.
During the campaign, Daudrich positioned himself as the most conservative of the two candidates and reflected on the elimination of the word “progressive” of the name of the party.
Daudrich promised to accelerate the development of Manitoba mines and build a second port in the Bay of Hudson, claiming that European clients would pay the bill for the proposed megaproject.
Progressive conservatives currently have 20 seats in the 57 -seat Manitoba Legislature, while the ruling NDP has 34.
A total of 10,999 PC members were eligible to vote in the 2025 leadership career. Brad Zander, president of the Party Leadership Selection Committee, said that 7,108 members completed the tickets and 6,750 of them were verified by party officials.
That resulted in 4,362 votes under a weighted system that prevented the candidates from stacking votes within a single Circumscription Association of Manitoba.
The 6,750 votes cast in the 2025 PC leadership career do not reach 16,807 tickets presented in the 2021 PC leadership career, which saw Stefanson defeating Glover by 363 votes.
