Manitoba Progressive Conservatives have narrowly selected Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan to serve as the party’s new leader.

After a six-month leadership contest, Khan defeated Wally Daudrich, who owns a hotel and ecotourism business in Churchill, in a vote conducted through mail-in ballots. Khan won 2,198 points in the weighted ballot to Daudrich’s 2,163, the Official Opposition party announced Saturday at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Winnipeg.

Khan’s victory gave him 50.4 per cent of the available points.

The leadership contest was sparked when former Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson stepped down as party leader in early 2024, months after her PCs lost the fall 2023 provincial election to Wab Kinew’s NDP.

Following her departure, the party appointed Lac du Bonnet MLA Wayne Ewasko as interim leader and decided on a lengthy contest to select a new permanent one.

The party gave prospective contestants six months to sign up for the race and another six months to campaign, partly to avoid a repeat of the party’s disputed 2021 leadership race between Stefanson and former Conservative MP Shelly Glover.

Khan, who was first elected to the Manitoba Legislature in a 2022 byelection, was endorsed by 10 out of 20 members of the PC caucus ahead of Saturday’s vote.

During the lengthy leadership race, he positioned himself as better able to lead the opposition party out of the political wilderness on the basis he already has a seat in the legislature. 

Khan made few policy announcements during the campaign. He promised to pursue more public-private partnerships within the health-care system and provide municipalities with an undisclosed portion of provincial sales tax revenue.

Khan becomes the first Muslim as well as the first Canadian from a South Asian ethnic background to lead the Manitoba Progressive Conservatives.

Daudrich, who plans to run in the forthcoming Manitoba byelection in Spruce Woods, did not receive endorsements from any members of the PC caucus. Early in the campaign, he described some PC MLAs as lazy and but declined to name the elected officials in question.

During the campaign, Daudrich positioned himself as the more conservative of the two candidates and mused about removing the word “progressive” from the party name.

Daudrich promised to fast-track the development of Manitoba mines and build a second port on Hudson Bay, claiming European customers would foot the bill for the proposed megaproject.

The Progressive Conservatives currently hold 20 seats in the 57-seat Manitoba Legislature, while the governing NDP holds 34.

A total of 10,999 PC members were eligible to vote in the 2025 leadership race. Brad Zander, chair of the party’s leadership selection committee, said 7,108 members completed ballots and 6,750 of those were verified by party officials.

That translated into 4,362 votes under a weighted system that prevented candidates from stacking votes within a single Manitoba constituency association.

The 6,750 ballots cast in the 2025 PC leadership race falls short of the 16,807 ballots submitted in the 2021 PC leadership race, which saw Stefanson defeat Glover by 363 votes.