New leader, new name or new party? Discussions swirl around Sask. NDP's future

As Saskatchewan's New Democratic Party prepares for a leadership race, some people and pundits are discussing what the party needs to move forward successfully. 

Ryan Meili, who has led the party since March 2018, will stay on as the provincial NDP leader until a replacement is found. But his announcement, last week, that he would step down has raised a number of questions for the party. 

And so far, no candidates have put their names forward in the party's fourth leadership race since 2009, though Regina Rosemont's Trent Wotherspoon and Saskatoon Centre's Betty Nippi-Albright have both said they won't run.

Regina-based Sally Housser, an NDP advisor who worked with Meili's 2020 campaign, told CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning that the party has needed to reconnect with regular, working people and voters since the 2007 election that brought the Saskatchewan Party to power.

"That's an issue we're kind of seeing, not just in Saskatchewan, but in Canada and really all around the world," said Housser, who works with the NDP throughout the country. 

"It's that kind of reconnection with people and their everyday concerns and pocketbook issues… That real personal aspect of reconnecting with voters the NDP needs to be focused on."

About 55 per cent of voters in Saskatchewan think the NDP needs to rebrand in order to be successful in Saskatchewan, according to a Reasearch.co poll published on Friday. It showed some 61 per cent of those who voted NDP in the 2020 provincial election felt the same way.

It also found that 53 per cent of decided voters would support the Saskatchewan Party and 37 per cent would vote NDP if an election were held now. The online poll of 808 people in the province was held between Feb. 19 and Feb. 23.

Anecdotally, people on social media have mixed views, with some calling for a new vision, a focus on attracting younger voters, or a new political party altogether. 

Sarah Wilke, a self-described uninformed voter, said in her younger voting years she often heard broad, sweeping generalizations about the boogeyman of the NDP, or judgments about politics and politicians in general and would vote along the same conservative lines as her parents.

Living in Saskatchewan, she felt her perspective was shared by many who are apathetic about provincial politics, or politics in general in Canada.

At university though, she was exposed to different perspectives and people and found herself with views more to the left of those she'd grown up with.

Recently, Wilke's interest in politics has grown and she's taken to Twitter, where she participated in a discussion last weekend with a mix of people from a variety of backgrounds, both politically-orientated and not.

She said some felt the same way she did about the party — that the NDP's name in particular, was "tarnished" in Saskatchewan.