Half of the incumbent governors are already in the race
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By mid-June, more than half of the regional leaders had passed the nomination procedure and officially entered the election campaign. So far, preparations for the September 2023 elections are proceeding without surprises: United Russia is expected to nominate incumbent governors, and the opposition is putting its strongest deputies against them.
In the first two weeks that have passed since the beginning of the election campaign, United Russia (ER) officially nominated for a new term the current mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin, the head of the Moscow region Andrey Vorobyov, governors Stanislav Voskresensky (Ivanovo region), Mikhail Vedernikov (Pskov region), Vasily Orlov (Amur Region), Sergey Nosov (Magadan Region), Aisen Nikolaev (Yakutia) and Viktor Tomenko (Altai Territory). The acting governors of Chukotka, the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Smolensk Region Vladislav Kuznetsov, Mikhail Kotyukov and Vasily Anokhin, as well as State Duma deputy Sergei Sokol, who claims to be the head of Khakassia, made their debuts as candidates from the United Russia.
Until the end of June, United Russia has to nominate acting governors Dmitry Azarov (Samara Region), Gleb Nikitin (Nizhny Novgorod Region), Oleg Kozhemyako (Primorye), Andrey Travnikov (Novosibirsk Region), Alexander Gusev (Voronezh Region), Sergey Tsivilev (Kuzbass) and Alexander Moor (Tyumen region), as well as the acting head of the Omsk region Vitaly Khotsenko. The only region where United Russia will not nominate a candidate is the Oryol region, which is headed by the communist Andrei Klychkov: in 2017 he was appointed to the post of interim governor by Vladimir Putin, and on June 8, 2023, he received a blessing from the president for a second term. In such cases, United Russia members traditionally support the choice of the head of state and do not participate in the race.
Recall that for the first time since 2017, there will be no favorites from among self-nominated candidates in the gubernatorial elections. Five years ago, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Acting Governor of the Omsk Region, Social Revolutionary Alexander Burkov, ran independently. In addition, Oleg Kozhemyako went to the re-election of the head of Primorye as a self-nominated candidate. This year, such a possibility was excluded from the Primorsky regional law. But in the Omsk region, she remained, which, by the way, the local “eternal candidate” Yuri Alexandrov has already taken advantage of.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation managed to nominate both of its current governors – Andrei Klychkov and the head of Khakassia Valentin Konovalov, as well as a number of candidates in other regions. By tradition, parliamentarians come from the communists. In particular, State Duma deputies Maria Prusakova and Andrei Alekhin are running for governors of the Altai Territory and Omsk Region, and legislative assembly deputies Andrei Novak, Roman Yakovlev, Alexander Naumov, Andrei Rogatnev and Sergei Goncharenko will compete for posts in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Novosibirsk, Moscow, Voronezh and Magadan areas, respectively.
A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP) and the Liberal Democratic Party also traditionally nominate either parliamentarians or leaders of their regional cells. So, Moscow Region Duma deputy Anatoly Nikitin will fight for the post of head of the Moscow Region from the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and his colleague Kirill Zhigarev from the Liberal Democrats. Similarly, members of the Legislative Assembly of the region Evgeny Borovikov and Sergey Bulaev were nominated for governors of the Altai Territory. In Khakassia, the deputy of the Supreme Council of the republic, Mikhail Molchanov, is running for the LDPR, and in the Novosibirsk region, the deputy of the city council of the regional center, Yevgeny Lebedev. Finally, in the Kolyma, the Social Revolutionaries nominated the head of the regional department, Oleg Prikoka.
The “new people”, in addition to Vladislav Davankov, a candidate for mayor of Moscow (for more details on his nomination, see on the same page), have so far put up rivals only for Mikhail Kotyukov – he became a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Denis Terekhov – and for Viktor Tomenko: this is the head of the fund property of the Altai Territory Vladislav Vakaev. From the struggle for the post of head of Yakutia, which theoretically could claim the ex-mayor of Yakutsk and deputy head of the party faction in the State Duma Sardana Avksentiev, “New People” refused.
By the way, the gubernatorial race in the Altai Territory still looks the most competitive in terms of the number of possible candidates. In addition to the listed candidates from the Duma parties, the leader of the Communists of Russia Sergey Malinkovich has already officially joined it, and the deputy of the Legislative Assembly Elena Khrustaleva (Pensioners’ Party), Associate Professor of the Institute of Humanities of Altai State University Viktor Nagaytsev (Green Alternative) and Head of the Laboratory of the Institute of Water and Environmental Problems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Kirillov (“The Greens”).
New People nominate Deputy Speaker of the State Duma for Mayor of Moscow
The Moscow branch of the New People party at its conference on Sunday nominated State Duma Vice Speaker Vladislav Davankov as a candidate for mayor of Moscow in the autumn elections. On May 19, the party already held an informal conference on his nomination for the mayor of the capital in the format of a picnic in Serebryany Bor. But at that time, the elections had not yet been scheduled, so after the Moscow City Duma adopted the relevant resolution on June 7, the party had to redo all the necessary procedures.
Anna Trofimenko, secretary of the metropolitan branch, shared her plans for the election campaign with the delegates: “We have an ambitious goal: to travel 100 districts, see how people live, what problems they have. We have already begun and have seen that Moscow is a city of contrasts. We realized that there are many myths in Moscow, both people and officials live by them.” As evidence, she listed three common judgments about the capital and invited the activists to guess if it was true or not. The first – that Moscow must continuously grow and condense, without which there will be no development – was called a myth. “Paris and New York have not grown much over the past 20 years, but there is economic growth,” the head of the department explained. The high salaries of Muscovites were also recognized as mythical. But with the statement that Moscow is the greenest metropolis in the world, which the audience met with distrust, Mrs. Trofimenko agreed: 49% of the capital’s area is occupied by green spaces. But the townspeople do not feel this, because most of the area falls on green areas such as Bitsevsky Park, and in ordinary areas where people live, there is not so much greenery, Anna Trofimenko emphasized.
The head of the party and its faction in the State Duma, Aleksey Nechaev, told how the vote on the candidate for mayor took place: “Our activists discussed for a long time, for several minutes, approaches and opinions fought. We always have multiple opinions. We always vote in the Duma in different ways.” But the candidacy of Vladislav Davankov, according to the leader, was unanimously approved by the department.
Then the candidate himself spoke, who told how he came up with the idea to run for mayor. Mr. Davankov broke his leg after slipping “on Moscow tiles”, lay in the hospital and “thought about Moscow”. As part of these reflections, the deputy studied the development strategy of the capital until 2030, which stated that by this time 20 million people would live in the city. “The main problem is the very compaction and expansion that everyone feels on themselves. In my opinion, Moscow should be different, in five years it should be made convenient for Muscovites,” said Vladislav Davankov. Therefore, the basis of his election program will be a moratorium on compact building and a course towards the uniform development of the city. He also said that he was going to launch the Million IT Women project in the capital, within which girls would be taught the basics of coding, working with neural networks and artificial intelligence for free.
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