Acceptance of applications from candidates for the primaries of elections to the Chelyabinsk City Duma of United Russia will end only on May 8. According to today, when the registration of participants was supposed to end, there were 101 people on the list, including 93 in the districts, 8 in the lists. There are no well-known names yet, although, according to Pravda UrFO interlocutors, many current deputies expect to be included in the new convocation.
“People are reluctant to participate in primaries because it is energy-consuming and, from an electoral point of view, useless. Instead of doing field work, you need to spend energy and money on the internal procedure. At the same time, everyone sees that there is no single team in the region: Texler’s and Kotova’s people are pulling the blanket in different directions. The headquarters for the primaries has not even been formed yet,” complained an interlocutor at the headquarters of one of the deputies.
According to the political strategist, resource candidates do not want to run in elections from United Russia, because a campaign from this party costs many times more than, for example, for self-nominated candidates. It is necessary to donate money to the “general treasury and overcome the noticeable anti-rating” associated with unpopular decisions of the authorities. The amounts are called different – from 10 and 30 million rubles.
“For many, time has been lost; all the main electoral waves have passed. New Year, March 8, February 23, and by May 9, it’s also unlikely that anyone will have time to release anything. And then summer, people will go to gardens and vacations,” says our interlocutor.
In addition, according to one of the deputies, “it is no more expensive to resolve your issues without a mandate today than with one.” “So is it worth spending money and risking problems with your business in the future?” – politicians ask themselves.
However, another representative of the party in power claims that there is still interest in the United Russia primaries, and the names of candidates who can realistically count on winning the preliminary vote are traditionally hidden until the last minute.
“In these elections, there is a federal requirement that there be SVO participants among the candidates,” said one of the technologists working in the elections. “But among the solvent candidates for the mandate there will be few such people.” Yuri Panov does not count – he is in disgrace and has already announced his decision not to run. As a result, many of those who are planning to run and counting on the support of the party in power considered it their duty to “check in” in Donbass.”
Ilya Isaychuk, Oleg Tolmachev, Ivan Gornov, Andrey Shmidt, Vitaly Rodionov and others have photographs “from the front line”. Also, experienced deputies have already started a campaign on social networks.
It is known that 25 deputies will get to the City Duma based on the results of elections in single-mandate constituencies, another 12 – according to party lists, taking into account the voting results. At the same time, the most deputies – five – will be given to the City Duma by the Kurchatovsky district, four each will be from Kalininsky, Traktorozavodsky and Leninsky, three each from Sovetsky and Metallurgical, as well as two from the Central district of Chelyabinsk.
Interestingly, the current speaker of the City Duma, Andrei Shmidt, apparently, will not be nominated in a single-mandate constituency. The key candidates there today are considered to be the head physician of the regional children’s hospital, Galina Kireeva, and the current deputy, Kirill Matveev. Schmidt was asked to run in elections using party lists, which does not provide one hundred percent guarantees.
“Schmidt is being dumped because he is Kotova’s man. She is interested in retaining him as chairman, since her re-election largely depends on this, said an interlocutor familiar with the situation. “But if five years ago Kotova was allowed to form the city duma for herself, now neither Mamin nor Vekshin want to allow this. They need “their own,” controlled City Duma, which will choose the mayor they need.”
The only problem is that officials don’t yet have Alexei Teksler as a clear candidate for the post of head of Chelyabinsk. The situation with the speaker of the City Duma is a little simpler – in political circles the candidate most often named is Sergei Buyakov, who heads the Social Policy Committee of the Legislative Assembly. There is no information about his registration on the United Russia primaries website, but “if his name appears there in the near future, it will be a clear and unambiguous signal to all elite groups.”
Let us note that there was already a precedent in the Chelyabinsk region when a deputy of the ZSO renounced his mandate, having won the elections to the City Duma. This was Andrei Baryshev, who, as they say, “for the time being, it was easier to resolve issues regarding his commercial properties in the status of a city deputy.” True, the “quiet life” did not last long; in 2016, from the envoys of the then governor Boris Dubrovsky, he received an offer that he could not refuse – to go to the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the district of Mikhail Yurevich.
As a result, not without using administrative resources, Baryshev won the elections, but again he was not “in favor” for long. At these elections, according to our information, candidates from Andrei Baryshev’s group will not be nominated. However, Texler’s team has a “backup” option in case Buyakov does not want to leave the ZSO – current City Duma deputy Denis Lapotyshkin.
In this situation, not everyone understands why the regional team started this war with Natalya Kotova, and even in the year of the gubernatorial elections. She quite effectively plays the role of a “lightning rod”, taking on all the negativity from the population. According to political scientist Alexander Podoprigora, Kotova has become toxic for Texler, so “they don’t want to go with her as a single team.”
“There are reasons for this, starting with the low level of trust among citizens, the lack of significant achievements and ending with the fact that this is a politician who came from the team of Yurevich, Davydov, Dubrovsky and Teftelev. Aristov also supported her. Now that these people are treated differently, there is no point in carrying such a burden, coordinating Kotova’s candidacy in United Russia, or lobbying in Moscow,” says Alexander Podrigora.
According to the expert, the mayor will be replaced “with a new person with an untarnished reputation.” He named Vice-Governor Alexander Bogashov as a possible person of interest. “But we will need to come to an agreement,” the political scientist added.
Podoprigora is confident that “September 2024 will become a landmark”, behind which representatives of the clans that have been participating in political processes for the last 20 years will remain. “This will be a different composition, but a coordinated and manageable City Duma. Whether the next era will be better, cleaner and more efficient than the previous one is a question. But these will definitely be different people,” the expert sums up.
Photo: website of the governor of the Chelyabinsk region
These new people will have to cut and redistribute the city’s budget – and this is almost half a hundred billion rubles. Let us note that a year ago Chelyabinsk deputies planned revenues and expenses of the city budget for 2024 in the amount of 47.8 billion rubles, for 2025 – 48.9 billion rubles.
The adjusted amounts will be considered at a City Duma meeting in May, and political scientists say that “the overwhelming number of nominees plan to recoup their investments in the campaign and continue to earn money on municipal contracts, as is traditional. The administrative resource allows current deputies to significantly replenish their budgets. Both directly, through orders, and lobbying the interests of friendly entrepreneurs. Moreover, Chelyabinsk’s budget is expected to increase by another fifth.”
Pravda UrFO will monitor the development of the situation.
