For anybody out there working on a provincial election, this quote nicely sums up an entire campaign:
"In the end," Rospars said, "all the digital stuff is in service of the offline reality of knocking on doors, making phone calls and ultimately persuading voters and turning them out."
(Rospars is the chief digital strategist of Obama for America 2012: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DIGITAL_OBAMA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-06-28-15-45-22)
There are two pieces he doesn't mention, which also service the "offline reality":
Fundraising: done entirely to support knocking on doors, making phone calls, persuading voters and getting them out
Communications/Marketing/Messaging: I don't care which one of these you see as overarching, they are connected. Also done in service of the same four things as fundraising.
If you keep your campaign focused on Rospars four points, you'll make substantial progress.
Hi Rob, just got around to reading your blog after not visiting any of my bookmarks for several weeks. First, your dedication and commitment are amazing, and if you hadn't stepped forward to lead the federal campaign, yikes!
ReplyDeleteIn your analysis of the election results, you appear to lay most of the blame for the devastating results at the feet of the Executive "old schoolers". You don't seem to take into consideration national and global influences, especially in a time of right-leaning politics, that will affect progressives, such as the Green Party, unfavourably, (in addition to there being not much focus from head office on individual campaigns other than Elizabeth's) and also that the strategy for the campaign locally was pared down, perhaps by necessity, even though much was accomplished.
While it is true the Executive was not as energetic as in the past, and perhaps as much as you might have wished, several members were burned out - extreme exhaustion for their overwhelming huge amount of work in 2005-2006-2007-2008-2009 on 5 different election campaigns - 1 municipal, 3 federal and 1 provincial. These people worked tirelessly to prepare for the campaigns during that time, some meeting weekly for over several months (9 months for the federal, 8 months for the provincial) and untold hours preparing for their parts in that work. Not to mention that many of these folks put in 16-hour days (you know what that's like) on the various campaigns. Hard to bounce back with lots of energy and passion when so much has been expended. So there was good reason for what you saw as lack of engagement, even though the Executive still accomplished most of their goals these past 2 years. All this I say is the call for new members to step in and provide the energy, ideas and passion for what needs to be done.
Re the election of the president - the Executive went by a principle that, if we had enough members staying for a second term, new members were encouraged to start as members-at-large, and that the President should ideally be someone who had served on the Executive in some capacity and was familiar with the Guelph Greens work in that way. Thus the recruiting for a candidate from within as well.
All this said, your work to recruit new members for the Executive is really appreciated, and I'm excited to see where the new people take the Green Party in Guelph. I leave with a smile and lots of confidence in the amazing talent there.