The New People party held a conference on Friday to nominate the candidature of the State Duma Vice Speaker Vladislav Davankov for the election of the mayor of Moscow. The event was held on the beach in Serebryany Bor in the format of a picnic with kebabs prepared by the candidate and eaten by the activists. Party leader Aleksey Nechaev noted his colleague’s sense of humor as his program proposals, and Mr. Davankov himself, as his program proposals, announced a moratorium on infill development and training of women in IT specialties so that they would earn no less than men, and also complained that Muscovites from residential areas still go to the center.
It has been known for a long time that Vladislav Davankov will run for Moscow mayor from the New People. In early March, at a conference on the occasion of the party’s third anniversary, its chairman Alexei Nechaev hinted at his nomination, saying that he slipped on “Sobyanin’s tiles” and broke his leg.
The topic of this incident also surfaced during the conference on the occasion of the official nomination, held on May 19 in an informal atmosphere on a Moscow beach in Serebryany Bor. Vladislav Davankov said that the first day he walks without a cane, not forgetting to remember the tiles.
Sardana Avksentyeva, deputy head of the New People faction in the State Duma, speaking at the conference, recalled her experience as the mayor of Yakutsk, which was both “simple and complex.” “We just needed to communicate, hear each other, talk more. The most difficult thing in the work of the mayor is that you are responsible for this territory 24 hours a day, you are not the boss, but the head of the city,” shared Ms. Avksentieva. According to her, the idea of a permanent dialogue “New People” will be promoted during the Moscow campaign.
The leader of the New People, Aleksey Nechaev, promised that all about 100 days before the mayoral election “it will be funny for us,” because Vladislav Davankov is “a man with a great sense of humor.” But if he wins, “it won’t be funny to anyone,” either he promised or warned Mr. Nechaev. He said that he met Mr. Davankov 20 years ago, when he was a first-year student, and “over all these years he has shown himself to be a man of action.” According to Alexei Nechaev, Muscovites deserve to be treated “like adults,” and “big authorities and city authorities still perceive them as little children.” Help here, according to the politician, can strengthen the role of municipal deputies as representatives of the townspeople.
Vladislav Davankov did not deceive Alexei Nechaev’s expectations and began his first official campaign speech with a joke, telling how his eleven-year-old son decided to participate in the creation of the candidate’s program and suggested that homework in schools be canceled in Moscow. Then he talked about the importance of “seeing trends”: in Moscow, more than a million people work remotely, and about the same number in a “hybrid mode” (combining remote work with trips to the office). “It is important to break the trend when people sleep in a residential area and work in the center. This leads to traffic jams, to rush hours in the subway. We need to create more spaces where people can meet and discuss things,” Mr. Davankov said. He also proposed a moratorium on infill development. “The city should be built in a different way,” the mayoral candidate inflamed. “You need to walk along the embankments, and not rush past in a car at high speed.” Finally, the politician suggested developing the IT industry and attracting women to it, so that “a million IT women” would appear in Moscow who would “earn no less than men.”
The official part of the conference lasted only about half an hour, after which Vladislav Davankov invited everyone to barbecue, which he went to cook himself. Young activists of the party quickly dealt with the treat.
According to the official biography, Vladislav Davankov opened his first business at the age of 14, having founded the first computer club in Smolensk with friends. In 2013, he took the post of vice president of Faberlic (whose founder is Alexey Nechaev). In 2018, he moved to work as the Deputy Head of the ANO “Russia – the Land of Opportunities”. The organization is supervised by the internal political bloc of the presidential administration and is engaged in holding various personnel competitions among young people and talented managers. In 2021, Mr. Davankov headed the campaign headquarters of the New People party in the elections to the State Duma.
Recall that on May 18, the research service Russian Field published a study according to which Vladislav Davankov turned out to be the most “unknown” candidate for mayor – only 6.8% of Muscovites had heard of him.
In first place in terms of recognition is the current mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin (96.8%), then the grandson of the leader of the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov, Leonid Zyuganov (46.9%). The LDPR candidate Boris Chernyshev is familiar to 16.3% of Muscovites, and the representative of A Just Russia – For Truth Dmitry Gusev is familiar to 11.8% of the capital’s residents. The poll was conducted on May 12–13 among 1,000 respondents.
