Reflections on a different kind of campaign

Me as runner in the 1974 Liberal Campaign (not really)

I think I was about eight when I worked on my first political campaign in 1972. My parents were big Liberals and I can remember going down to Bud Drury’s campaign office and licking so many envelopes that my mother was compelled to go and buy me a freezie.  I was also pretty good at keeping our button table  stocked  and our  bumper sticker display all tidy. Back then, campaign offices were full of nice ladies (mostly) yacking on phones, typing stuff, moving pins around on big maps and smoking like chimneys.  In 1974 , I got promoted to runner on election day, so my mum and I would drive around and collect hand-written lists from the Liberal scrutineers at the polls and take them back to HQ so that identified Liberal could be called and told to go vote.  It was an amazing  machine to watch in action and it was all done without a single computer.

 In our riding, the Liberals  could have run a stick of  kindling and it still would have won, but they didn’t take any chances.  The PC candidate was now Senator Michael Meighen, known to  Stratfordites as a major and generous supporter of the Stratford Festival and sometime Stratford resident.  Sen. Meighen is and extremely classy, articulate, intelligent and kind man. We crushed him like a bug.  Twice. In the 1979 election, I was again promoted to scrutineer.  Scrutineers are the people who work for the parties and keep an eye on the whole voting process at each individual poll to make sure no funny business goes on.  They are the heart and soul of every fair election that has ever taken place.  It was all a fascinating and inspiring education.

Fast forward 32 years.  I am the candidate  for a party that did not exist  in 1979, I am at home writing a “blog”  for a “website” which I will publicize on “facebook” and  by “twitter”, and instantly the vast majority of voters in my riding can read what I have to say, many of them on a tiny computer in their pocket, and they can respond if they want to, instantly.  I don’t need any 8 year old envelope lickers or an army of  people calling people on telephones. In a way it is sad, but in another way it frees us up to make elections about ideas and the exchange of those ideas. At any time, anyone with a computer can look at all the policy documents of all the parties, compare them and make a very informed decision.  This also means that, in theory, elections do not even have to be about which party has the most money for phones, offices, cars, gasoline,  and literally tons of printed paper material.  In theory, that is even more democratic. Social media has now even been largely responsible for toppling dictators in some parts of the world like Egypt and Tunisia and helping those places take their first tentative steps towards the democracy that too many of us here take for granted.  Will a largely virtual political campaign work in this country? We will soon find out.  Thanks for tuning in.

I need a freezie. 

Off and Running, I guess.

I have once again accepted the nomination to run as the Green Party candidate in Perth-Wellington in the upcoming federal election slated for May 2. Woo-hoo!

Background: I have run for the party federally in the last three previous elections and my best showing so far was a fourth place finish in the 2008 election in which I got 3,884 votes (or 9 %).  The Perth-Wellington Greens and I were the only candidate and/or party to increase the number of votes we received from the previous election in 2006.  In fact, every time the Green Party has run in this riding, federally or provincially, we always increase the percentage of votes we got from the time before, starting with the federal election in 2000, when the late Eric Eberhardt got 2.75%. (He actually ran in Perth-Middlesex.) We are hoping to build on this momentum for the seventh straight time as more and more people are exposed to our message.

I think this time we are going to focus on a ‘grown-up’ and 21^st century-style campaign. I don’t think elections should be about who has the most or the prettiest signs. I don’t think they should even be about who has the most money to spend on radio or newspaper ads or flyers in the mail.  In this age of e-mail and the Internet, election campaigns can and should evolve beyond door knocking and lawn signs. I have a few old lawn signs from the last election if you really want one and promise to look after it, but I represent a party that is opposed to unnecessary pollution and waste, so I don’t really want to cover the countryside in plastic that ends up in farmers fields. An election should be about ideas and issues, it’s not a child’s birthday party with decorations, balloons and loot bags full of pins and fancy stickers.

That is partly where this blog comes in. My team and I will concentrate on engaging in meaningful discussions with constituents using e-mail, websites, this blog and social media.  Facebook and Twitter are fun toys, most of the time, but I want to see if we can use them to get our message across instantly and cheaply. If they have been used to topple dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, maybe they can be used to invigorate our democracy here in Canada. We’ll see.

While broad, Green Party support is stronger with young people for whom the internet is now a way of life, but I also want to be accessible to people who make the effort to call me on the phone or come to all candidates meetings.

So what do I think the issues should be in this election? When I asked a friend of mine that question he said, “‘superprisons vs. rehabilitation/education, a future economy built around innovation and R&D, revitalizing the healthcare system to respond to the aging population, a focused green transportation initiative, planning for cities and their infrastructures, elimination of the inter-provincial trade barriers, an energy plan developed with a generational timeframe, restoring decorum in our parliamentary system, and a military budget built on a vision of Canada's role in the world.” I couldn’t agreed more or put it better.

What the issues end up being might be another story altogether.  Stay tuned and please give me any and all input you can, I will respond as well and truthfully as I can and together we can find out whether it is possible to sensibly discuss issues and engage thoughtful citizens in their democratic process, at least at election time. Thanks for reading.