How Steve Ashton could win Manitoba NDP leadership race

Steve Ashton was the underdog in 2009. He's starting out as the underdog in 2015 as well. Theresa Oswald has the benefit of a lot of a high-profile rebels on her side and Greg Selinger is, well, the premier.

Ashton will have an uphill battle to win.

The longest serving MLA in the legislature and the long-serving cabinet minister certainly has the experience. He's seen as a policy wonk by some in the party, who has a flare for the one-on-one exchange. He'll need to turn that charisma in private meetingsinto more wide-appeal crowd pleasing to win.

Despite the fact that Theresa Oswald has painted him as a capital-C Conservative in the early days of the campaign, he's potentially the most left of the three candidates. In order to win this race, he'll probably skew his campaign more to the centre.

We've already seen it.

His first campaign promise was a referendum on the PST increase. The referendum could see the tax increase scrapped all together even faster than PC Leader Brian Pallister is promising, and Ashtonhas saidhe will live without the cash if that's what Manitobans decide.

A lack of caucus support hurt Ashton's bid in 2009. Only three caucus backbenchers Tom Nevaskshonoff, Bidhu Jha and Daryl Reid endorsed him for premier.

He's already doubled his caucus support in the early days of the 2015 leadership race. One particularly important sign of this:he's nabbed Jim Rondeau and Christine Melnick away from Selinger, who supported the premier in the 2009 race.Both of these MLAs were dropped from the premier's cabinet in 2014, so the fact that they would be displeased with his leadership isn't altogether surprising, I suppose, but their support for Ashton is significant.

St. Norbert MLA Dave Gaudreau has been a loud supportive voice for Steve Ashton so far. Gaudreau called the premier "damaged" and Theresa Oswald "divisive."

• How Theresa Oswald would win Manitoba NDPleadership race

• How Greg Selinger would win Manitoba NDP leadership race
  

This is exactly the kind of thinking that could see Ashton win the leadership race. If enough New Democrats take issue with the other two candidates, Ashton could pull out a win.

Steve Ashton has a proven, successful ground game. This will have to be repeated. In 2009, heading into the leadership race, the NDP had 5,500 members, by membership deadline that grew to 14,000. A lot of those new or renewed memberships were attributed to Ashton's campaign. It helped Ashton win the most delegates from 10 constituencies, including the three largest.

Ashton's mobilization could help offset a smaller amount of caucus support. Most often when an MLA endorses a leadership candidate, that candidate is also the choice of the majority of the delegates selected from the riding.

But in 2009, two of the ridings with the highest number of delegates up for grabs (The Maples and The Pas) bucked the trend. In each case, Selinger was the choice of the elected member, but Steve Ashton won the delegate selection process.

If Ashton is able to run a successful ground game in several ridings, pile up more high-profile support and showcase himself as the most-unscathed candidate, he will make a serious race of it.