In Winnipeg, the window is closing to challenge one of the most vulnerable incumbent mayor in decades

As the calendar is about to flip to an election year in Winnipeg, the time is growing short for candidates to mount a serious electoral challenge to Mayor Scott Gillingham.

The former pastor and St. James councillor, who is nearing the end of his first term as Winnipeg’s mayor, announced back in July he will face voters again on Oct. 28, 2026.

This alone makes Gillingham the candidate to beat next year, thanks to the outsized role incumbency has played in deciding Winnipeg mayoral races.

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.

That means on the next election night, 70 years will have transpired since the last sitting mayor in this city failed to take advantage of the name recognition provided by the simple act of being the mayor.

Nonetheless, Gillingham may be more vulnerable to defeat than any incumbent Winnipeg mayor has been for decades. There are two tangible reasons for this — and more debatable factors that could affect his re-election prospects.

What’s not up for debate is the narrow margin of Gillingham’s victory in 2022. He squeaked by on election night with 27.5 per cent of the popular vote, repelling a comeback by former mayor Glen Murray by a piddly margin of 4,391 votes.

That was the closest Winnipeg mayoral race since Robert Steen edged past Bill Norrie in 1977. More importantly, the combination of a 37 per cent voter turnout in 2022 and Gillingham’s small share of the popular vote on election night arguably handed the city’s current mayor the weakest mandate in modern Winnipeg history.

How weak? Only about 10 per cent of eligible Winnipeg voters elected Winnipeg’s mayor in 2022.

This means Gillingham did not benefit from an overwhelming wave of voter support in his first mayoral race the way Brian Bowman did in 2014 or Sam Katz did in 2004 — and thus cannot count on throngs of fervent supporters making he same decision in a re-election effort.

That leads us to the second tangible factor that does not benefit Gillingham next year. The power of incumbency may not be what it used to be at all levels of government, in Canada and beyond.

"Throw-the-bums-out" sentiment among voters has led to a broad array of election night surprises over the past two years, including Donald Trump’s capture of the U.S. popular vote last year, the loss of Pierre Poilievre’s long-held Carleton seat in the House of Commons and the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives' loss of their Winnipeg stronghold of Tuxedo.

The common thread running those disparate races was a lack of reverence for political establishment. Even a politician as obscure as the mayor of the capital of a have-not Canadian province should not believe himself immune to the prevailing sentiment.

Obscurity is also a big part of a more debatable disadvantage for Scott Gillingham. This incumbent is relatively quiet, not very flashy and simply does not enjoy same public profile as his two most recent mayoral predecessors.