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.