What comes next?

Coming up on a month after the Federal election and there doesn’t appear to be much information coming out of the National office about the future of the Green’s. This is not totally unexpected, I am hoping some key people are taking a much deserved break after the intensity of the election. I myself am struggling with a new round of health concerns following the election and have spent lots of quality time both with my doctor and in the emergency room.

With Elizabeth May officially being sworn in today though, I am very curious to start hearing about what the impact of this election will be! I am assuming that the party is in better financial health now than it was after the 2008 election, as there is additional money for staffing with an MP (although I assume not much) and I assume that the federal council learned the 2008 lessons about not over-extending financially and that it will be relatively painless for the party to be out of debt almost immediately.

Does anyone know what Elizabeth, Georges, Johan, Adrienne and the Federal Council have planned for a four-year strategy? Are we investing money in organizers who can now emphasize EDA building? Are resources being shifted to help BC and Ontario prepare for provincial elections*? Are there key messages or issues that Elizabeth is planning to take on in Parliament that we could be playing off of in our own local events and messaging?

Regardless, it’s an exciting moment in Guelph. Almost every active member of the Lawson campaign team has applied for a role on the local executive and there are two EXTREMELY talented people who are campaigning to be our provincial candidate in the Fall. My allegiance/preference/vote is for local Solar business owner Steve Dyck. He’s a long time Green with a large amount of passion and enthusiasm. His competition, former city councillor Mike Salisbury, is an excellent candidate as well but he’s left questions unanswered for me in his candidacy so far. Watching Steve bring new people into the party and motivate a team of folks who just left a federal campaign exhausted has been inspiring and a positive sign for what he may be able to achieve in the next six months. 

I’m looking forward to seeing what a group who is dedicated to doing tangible, relationship-building oriented work in the community is capable of. The recent election shellacking seems to have motivated local Green’s to not repeat the same mistakes, which should make for a very fun summer! I’m sure that we’ll be looking for ways that we can make a positive contribution in the community, so if you know of a local organization that is looking for volunteer help for specific projects, drop me a line and we’ll see what we can partner on!

(*in unofficial ways, obviously)

Lawson Campaign Thank You's!

I know that some of the new readers to this blog are people that participated with John's campaign, so here is a list of people to thank! (There are too many of you to get each one individually, so I apologize if I left you out. No slight intended)

I'll lead off with John. Much has been said about the inspiring job he did as a new candidate that had to develop his familiarity with the actual platform of the Greens. He was tireless, determined, open to feedback and demonstrates an incredibly amount of warmth and compassion that draws people in. I appreciated learning from him about rounding out my own style and am proud to have been involved in his campaign.

We determined early on that most of this campaign was about identifying Green voters. So the next thank you is to the people that sacrificed countless hours of that. A lot of this task was taken up by Laura and Sher in the office and it would be impossible to give them enough praise. There were many learning moments along the way, but the amount of performance they demonstrated in moving an organization that hadn't done supporter identification, data management or volunteer organizing in a meaningful way for years was astounding. I was inspired by their dedication. Then I have to thank you dedicated canvassers, both at the doors and on the phones. Aerin, Mark, Gillian, Pete, Heather, Steve, Steve D., Moragh, Kip, Michael, Katelin are the names of our regulars who spring to mind, with countless others finding ways to put in at least a few hours per week. This work laid the foundation for the GPO campaign that starts right away and is easily the most valuable thing we achieved. It could not have been done without such a tremendous team effort.

The campaign coordinators, particularly in the first couple weeks, helped to quickly build a functional organization from scratch. George, Andre, Gillian, Steve, Laura, Mark and Sher overcame a significant number of obstacles and took on tasks that may not have been something they had experience with in the past. I hope that everything we started in building teams will help our eventual Provincial candidate start miles ahead of where we did in mid-March.

For Steve V., Anne, Mary, Patti, Sara and Jenny: Thank you for consistently delivering the campaign messages. Your work on the website, twitter, facebook, answering surveys and preparing press releases allowed the bulk of the campaign time to be focussed on supporter identification and usually appeared to be effortless, although I know it was not. I believe this to be the mark of a team performing at a high level, thank you!

I hope that the experience for the people making a significant contribution on a campaign for the first time was fun. People like Dave, Joel, Beth, Mark, Laura, Gillian, Kip and Katelin are the group that is going to determine whether the Green Party in Guelph re-builds into a significant leadership role or not and I hope that something in this campaign inspires them to choose action over inaction. My greatest hope is that we choose to take a couple weeks off, dust ourselves off and start to work on electing a Green MPP here in Guelph this Fall. 

It was a lot of fun and and honour to work with all of you. Thanks.

A Quick look at the Guelph Numers

2011:
Liberal - 25,574 - 43%
Conservative - 19,252 - 32%
NDP - 9,836 - 16%
Green - 3,711 - 6%
Other - 3%

2008

Liberal - 18,977 - 32%

Conservative - 17,185 - 29%

Green - 12,456 - 21%

NDP - 9,709 - 16%

Other - 2%

The differences between each parties support tells the story of this election. Between 2008 and 2011, the total vote increased by about 75 people or essentially 0% of 59,000 voters. The change in percentage vote  of each party is as follows:

Conservative: +3

NDP +0

Other +1

and...

Liberal +11

Green - 15

So, for all intents and purposes, 80% of the people that voted Green in 2008 moved to the Liberal, 20% moved to the Conservatives and Others. 

Green leaning voters were scared that a Conservative would win so they voted Liberal. The NDP surge appears to have not materialized locally. Thoughts?

Federal Election 2011

With the conclusion of the 2011 federal election I thought it worthwhile to offer some thoughts on what happened. For first time readers, I’m a person who’s been an active member of the Green Party on and off for five years and I managed the Green Party campaign for John Lawson in Guelph for the past seven weeks.

So, in no particular order:

1. The Green Party of Canada established electing Elizabeth May as it’s only primary goal at some point shortly following the election in 2008. Elizabeth May was elected, I’ll admit to being a voice that was unsure that this was going to happen. During the election I was happy to assist with calls to SGI and am happy that she won. I believe that achieving significant milestones such as this should be celebrated J. Congratulations to everyone who worked hard on electing Elizabeth in SGI.

2. Nationally, it feels as if we were decimated. I don’t have the exact numbers, but it appears that the number of ridings that exceeded 10% of the votes dropped an extraordinary amount between 2008 and 2011. Here in Guelph, that comes at a catastrophic financial cost. It’s important for the decision makers in the Green Party to do a thorough analysis of why this happened beyond Elizabeth May not being in the debates. I would suggest that ridings who have built strong relationships in the community could deal with an unfavourable national climate and the fact that we were unable to do so suggests that we do not have the relationships we need. As it was, the national climate in this campaign was about fear and we were unable to communicate that we were a legitimate alternative to the politics of fear. The NDP were obviously able to capitalize on this message.

3. In Guelph, I think we still struggle with a divide between “old-school” and “new” Greens. A group of new Greens got involved in this campaign. My experience of the past is that the emotional attachment and personal investment that the old-school Greens have with the party prevented new people from getting involved, to the point where an old school member put a name in for riding president far past the nomination deadline to prevent a new member from becoming president. This challenge is difficult, as I am unsure of what actions can be taken to create an environment where old-school members can trust and feel safe with resigning or leaving their positions and knowing that they will be well cared for by new (less experienced) members. Up until 2008, their leadership built a strong foundation in Guelph, since then (to be blunt) they laid the groundwork that helped us lose ¾ of our support. I played a role in that and am hoping to find new approaches to solve that problem.

4. I hope that, both locally and nationally, we are growing to understand the use of social media better. I observed us to be very effective at the usage of it nationally, but I cling to the belief that, at it’s most effective usage, social media can only amplify a message. It is not a solution to engaging youth, winning media cycles or recruiting volunteers/raising money. The Green Party (as all others) will need to continually improve two things: What are the best ideas we can come up with to improve our future and how can we communicate these ideas in a way that the average person in Canada can connect with. Ultimately, I still feel like I can’t define or connect with what the Green Party is. If I can’t define that, then odds are I am doing a poor job of communicating that to voters. I hope for some assistance from the central party in shaping that answer J.

5. It’s going to be fun to watch Elizabeth participate in governing! Watching her use the 24/7 media cycle and relationship buildings skills inside parliament could lead to all sorts of unexpected successes.