Taimyr chose Norilsk Nickel
Head of RAO Alexander Khloponin became governor
On Sunday, gubernatorial elections were held in Taimyr. The victory in them, as Kommersant expected, was won by the general director of RAO Norilsk Nickel, Alexander Khloponin - according to preliminary data, 61.97% of voters voted for him.

The elections in Taimyr were recognized as having taken place by 2 p.m. local time. On average, 63.27% of voters in the district voted. Of these, almost 62% voted for the General Director of RAO Norilsk Nickel, Alexander Khloponin. 33.37% voted for the current governor Gennady Nedelin. The third candidate, one of the directors of the Norilsk Mining Company and a deputy of the District Duma, Mikhail Steklov, also found fans (his candidacy was nominated by Norilsk Nickel only to prevent the governor from disrupting the elections by withdrawing his candidacy) - he received 0.66%. Governor Nedelin is popular in rural areas - Ust-Yenisei and Khatanga. Dixon and Dudinka (where 27 of the 44 thousand population of the district live) believed in Mr. Khloponin, and in the Arctic region five times more votes were given for him than for the head of the district.
The mood of voters was not influenced by the frightening image of an “oligarch” created by the governor’s team, in which Dudinka would cease to exist as the administrative center of the district, Taimyr would lose its status as a federal subject, and RAO would begin to squeeze people out of the North and introduce a rotational system. The arguments of the head of Norilsk Nickel turned out to be more weighty: in the Norilsk industrial region (which is located on the territory of the district, but is administratively subordinate to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, of which Taimyr, in turn, is a part), various social programs have been successfully operating over the past four years.
Member of the Central Election Commission Sergei Bolshakov and chief federal inspector for Taimyr and Evenkia Evgeniy Vasilyev, who observed the voting process, noted the clarity of the elections. The voting actually took place without incident, except for the fact that on the night from Saturday to Sunday a woman was brought to the duty station of the district police department with propaganda leaflets. The offender turned out to be the mother of Pyotr Kucherenko, head of the election headquarters of Governor Nedelin. She had to spend about two hours at the police station.
According to the head of the district election commission, Pyotr Zaitsev, the final voting results will be announced no earlier than Wednesday, when the commission receives election protocols from remote areas. However, these figures are unlikely to affect the overall voting result - according to local law, the winner is determined by a simple majority of votes. As Mr. Zaitsev believes, none of the candidates will challenge the election results.
NIKOLAY EFIMOV, Dudinka

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 15 dated January 30, 2001, p. 2