Oppositionists fill out shortlists – Newspaper Kommersant No. 26 (7471) dated 02/13/2023
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Parliamentary parties continue to select candidates for participation in the autumn elections of the mayor of Moscow. To the shortlist of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, consisting of State Duma deputies Denis Parfyonov, Vadim Kumin and Yuri Afonin, so far the only likely contender from A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP) has been added – State Duma deputy and leader of the metropolitan branch of the party Dmitry Gusev. In the Liberal Democratic Party, one of the potential candidates may also be the head of the Moscow branch, Dmitry Koshlakov-Krestovsky. The New People have not yet commented on the topic of elections in Moscow, and United Russia will traditionally support a candidate who is approved by the president.
The official start of the campaign for the election of the mayor of Moscow, according to the electoral law, will be given in early June. At the same time, the nomination of candidates will begin, but informally shortlists of candidates in a number of parties are already being prepared now.
As Kommersant previously reported, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has not yet officially announced his participation in the autumn elections, but a Kommersant source familiar with the situation in the capital says that the mayor has such an intention. In 2018, he ran as an independent candidate with the support of United Russia (ER) and won with a score of 70.17% of the vote. Then Mr. Sobyanin explained his decision not to be nominated from the party by the fact that he considers the position of mayor to be more economic than political. What method of nomination the mayor will prefer this year is still unknown.
United Russia traditionally supports those candidates for governor who were previously approved by President Vladimir Putin, and, as a rule, this happens following a meeting between the head of the region and the activists. For example, on June 8, 2018, Sergei Sobyanin announced that he would participate in the elections as a self-nominated candidate, and on June 25, the metropolitan branch of the United Russia unanimously supported his candidacy at a conference. Most likely, this will be the case this time, says a Kommersant source close to the party leadership.
As Kommersant previously reported, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was the first to shortlist candidates: the most likely candidates are State Duma deputies Denis Parfyonov, Vadim Kumin and First Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Yuri Afonin. In the 2018 elections, the Communist Party was represented by Mr. Kumin, who received 11.38% of the vote. Now the discussion of possible nominees of the party is being conducted in the primary organizations of Moscow. And after the candidates selected in the primary elections pass the approval stage in the personnel commission, the final candidates will be submitted to the conference of the regional branch, where the main candidate will be determined by voting.
Sources of Kommersant, close to the Moscow branch of the SRZP, call the head of the branch, State Duma deputy Dmitry Gusev, the most likely candidate for mayor. On February 16, the metropolitan branch will hold a conference at which the election program of the candidate for mayor will be discussed, and the final decision will be made at the SRHR regional conference after the election is called. In the 2018 campaign, the Social Revolutionaries were represented by municipal deputy Ilya Sviridov, who came third with 7.01% of the vote.
According to Kommersant’s sources close to the Liberal Democratic Party, there may be several “candidates” there, but one of them will most likely be the leader of the Moscow Liberal Democrats, Dmitry Koshlakov-Krestovsky. He himself told Kommersant that the issue of nominating a candidate would be considered “in the near future”, the decision would be made by the supreme council of the party, and the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party Leonid Slutsky would “definitely take part” in this decision. The deputy head of the LDPR faction in the State Duma, Yaroslav Nilov, explained to Kommersant that a party conference would nominate a candidate for mayor of Moscow: “Now this issue is at the stage of light discussion. There are various candidates. Koshlakov-Krestovsky is our coordinator for Moscow, but no decision has been made at the moment.” In 2018, the then State Duma deputy, and now the governor of the Khabarovsk Territory, Mikhail Degtyarev, participated in the mayoral elections from the Liberal Democratic Party. He finished fourth with a score of 6.72%.
This will be the first opportunity for the newly created New People party to run in the Moscow mayoral elections, but so far its representatives have declined to comment on the topic. Two Kommersant sources close to the New People leadership explain that so far the party members have not completed consultations with the mayor’s office on this issue. The option of nominating the leader of the New People, Alexei Nechaev, is also being considered, but the party would like him to get a decent result on the eve of the 2024 presidential campaign, says one of Kommersant’s interlocutors.
From the non-parliamentary opposition, no one has yet directly announced their intention to participate in the election of the mayor of Moscow. Only the Moscow City Duma deputy from Yabloko, Sergei Mitrokhin, does not rule out such a possibility, but he is concerned about a large number of obstacles and, in particular, the “municipal filter”. Mr Mitrokhin ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013 and finished fourth with 3.51% of the vote. Yabloko did not participate in the 2018 campaign due to an internal conflict in the party.
Recall that in Moscow, in order to overcome the “municipal filter”, each candidate for mayor needs to collect signatures of at least 6% of all municipal deputies (110 autographs) from three-quarters of the districts (there are 146 districts in the capital). Self-nominated candidates also need to submit signatures of at least 0.5% of all voters in the city. As of January 1, 2023, about 7.6 million voters were registered in Moscow, therefore, a self-nominated candidate will need to submit about 38,000 signatures to the city election committee.
According to political scientist Alexei Makarkin, in the 2023 Moscow mayoral elections, opposition parties are likely to nominate status, but not charismatic candidates: “Experience, like in 2004, when Vladimir Zhirinovsky (then leader of the LDPR.— “b”) nominated his bodyguard for the presidential elections, will not.” The candidates nominated by the opposition will not strongly criticize the current mayor, the expert suggests: “They will rather act in the spirit of proposals: what can we offer Sergei Sobyanin to make Moscow even better?” In general, the opposition representation in the mayoral elections will be quite expected and standard, the political scientist predicts: the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the SRZP, the Liberal Democratic Party, and “the modernist electorate may be offered a candidate from the New People party.” At the same time, for the parties, the election of the mayor of Moscow will be a model for the future presidential campaign, adds Mr. Makarkin.
The head of the Petersburg Politics Foundation, Mikhail Vinogradov, believes that the choice of candidates for mayor by the opposition parties will depend on the goals they pursue: “Remind yourself, build bridges with Sobyanin, try to become a hardware ally of Sobyanin’s opponents, test estimates for 2024, “skip a turn”. And it is the latter option that seems to Mr. Vinogradov to be more probable so far.
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