Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

218 Elena Denezhkina and Adrian Campbellpopularity in a large a wealthy region, helped him to reverse the position. ByJuly 2003 not only had Rossel received the blessing of the President to runfor a third term, but he would be doing so as the candidate from UnitedRussia, the first governor to be elected for United Russia rather than one ofits predecessor parties. 49Rossel as an incumbent governor now looked unassailable, whereasChernetsky as incumbent mayor looked potentially vulnerable against aRossel-backed campaign to unseat him. In anticipation, Chernetsky’s campaignteam appeared to opt for a two-stage approach: first to establish thetheme of organized crime as an issue in the gubernatorial elections inSeptember 2003 (which they had little chance of winning) and then to usethe still-warm theme to deadlier effect again in the mayoral election ofDecember 2003 (which they had to win, or see the end of the mayoralregime). The choice of Bakov to stand for governor against Rossel with acampaign theme of organized crime was a bold one. Bakov had the reputationof being an adventurer, to say the very least. He had been involved in anumber of scandalous incidents (notably when he had been arrested in 2001for assaulting the oligarch Fedulev during a forced takeover of theKhimmash plant), and he had been a close associate of Rossel’s during theperiod when the governor and Uralmash had allegedly become allied.However these factors, plus Bakov’s undeniable gift for self-publicity, mayhave been precisely what ensured a large audience for his public accusations,which were outspoken and dramatic even by the standards of Sverdlovskpolitics: 50I kept silent, as we all did. And I thought it was normal … you learnfrom an early age that there is no justice and....you’re not surprised whenyou see a police chief sharing a table with a known bandit. You’re nolonger surprised when an underworld ‘avtoritet’ is praised on televisionfor his philanthropy or when thieves stand for election as council deputies.51Bakov’s bid for the governorship was of course heavily defeated – no onecould compete seriously with Rossel’s profile across the region. However, ithad almost certainly made a big impact on the real electoral battleground,Ekaterinburg.When it came to the mayoral election in December 2003, the assumptionthat Osintsev would be the runner-up in the first round proved correct. Therehad been a number of other candidates, most of whom polled very few votes(OPS Uralmash’s Khabarov and Serebrennikov both ran – perhaps to distractattention from their alleged alliance with Osintsev, and received verylow votes). The local banker Gusev fought a well-funded campaign butlacked a clear campaign theme. Jan Gabinsky, the duma deputy, had beenstrongly backed by the governor’s team at first, but was mercilessly lampoonednot only by the city’s PR team but also (allegedly) by the Oblast