{"id":17008,"date":"2020-10-07T13:27:12","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T08:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/?p=17008"},"modified":"2020-10-07T13:27:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T08:27:12","slug":"russian-cleaner-marina-udgodskayas-takes-office-after-surprise-election-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/17008","title":{"rendered":"Russian Cleaner Marina Udgodskaya&#8217;s takes Office After Surprise Election Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article__block article__block--html article__block--column \">\n<p>Moscow, A cleaner from a small Russian village has put away her brooms and become its reluctant leader after unexpectedly winning last month\u2019s regional vote and overthrowing the pro-Kremlin incumbent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t put myself forward,\u201d Marina Udgodskaya, 35,\u00a0told \u00a0the news website in one of her early interviews before going silent due to overwhelming national media attention.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article__block article__block--article article__block--column \">\n<aside class=\"article__related-article\">Udgodskaya explained that she was persuaded to run by the incumbent to meet the vote&#8217;s two-candidate minimum requirement. Neither candidate campaigned in any way, but the former cleaner swept to power in a 87-to-48 landslide.<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article__block article__block--html article__block--column \">\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t do anything at all, but the people came and voted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Udgodskaya was inaugurated as head of Povalikhino, the largest of 29 villages in the Kostroma region 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow. Their combined population totals around 400 people.<\/p>\n<p>Her triumph over pro-Kremlin incumbent Nikolai Loktev is seen less as a political statement from the villagers toward Moscow and more as a personal rebuke of the 58-year-old former policeman\u2019s leadership style.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI respect Nikolai Sergeyevich very much,\u201d Udgodskaya\u00a0 told\u00a0 reporters after the swearing-in ceremony Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Other locales, notably Russia\u2019s third-largest city of Novosibirsk and the Siberian city of Tomsk, saw opposition candidates win seats on Sept. 13 despite nationwide irregularities and claims of fraud. These candidates received the active backing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny\u2019s \u201cSmart Vote\u201d strategy, which urges voters to cast their ballots for the candidate with the highest chance of unseating pro-Kremlin rivals.<\/p>\n<p>Udgodskaya had considered quitting, but that turned out to be a costly option, the small pensioners\u2019 party that nominated her says Udgodskaya would have been saddled with the steep costs of a re-run.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think she\u2019ll cope. The whole village will help,\u201d village shopkeeper Irina\u00a0 told\u00a0 the International media outlets..<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moscow, A cleaner from a small Russian village has put away her brooms and become its reluctant leader after unexpectedly winning last month\u2019s regional vote and overthrowing the pro-Kremlin incumbent. \u201cI didn\u2019t put myself forward,\u201d Marina Udgodskaya, 35,\u00a0told \u00a0the news website in one of her early interviews before going silent due to overwhelming national media [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":17009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1472],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17010,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17008\/revisions\/17010"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}