So what about that voter turnout? Is the fact that only a reported 48% (or 52%, according to some) of eligible voters went to the polls significant?
I just wonder how much the lists distort the picture. Here are just three anecdotes which may (or may not!) be illustrative:
A man we know has two names, one his legal name and the other the one he goes by. So he appears at the same address twice, but votes once.
A couple has moved since the last election. They registered at their new address with Elections BC. Consequence? They appeared on the voters’ list twice.
We received 5 cards at our address. One was for eldest daughter, teaching in Turkey. Another was for middle daughter, who has, since registering for the last election, joined her husband in Texas. Youngest daughter got one card at our house and another at the address in Campbell River where she actually lives when she’s here, so that’s the address she presented when she voted. Consequently, only 40% of the registered voters at our address voted in our poll.
Maybe before we work ourselves up over this point we should make sure the base statistics are reasonably accurate.
I’m rather more concerned about the demographics, as they proved out in this campaign. The average age of our campaign team, financial contributors, and volunteers cannot have been much under 60, and the Liberals, judging from everything I saw on my radar were even fewer and older.
That’s obviously not sustainable.
Obama’s campaign proved this trend isn’t democratic destiny, but I don’t see anything on the horizon of the NDP (or the Liberals, or even the Greens) that suggests it’s about to change in BC.
Which takes me to the subject of electoral change. I’m not positive it would connect more younger people to our democratic institutions, but it obviously couldn’t hurt. Most British Columbians, me included, think it’s well past time BC had some Green MLAs (and a Marijuana Party MLA or two wouldn’t hurt either).
So why did I vote against BC-STV? Because the more I thought about it the more unworkable it seemed. Because David Schreck’s research convinced me that where it’s in force STV doesn’t do most of the things its proponents argued for, including making room for more women in politics, or giving voice to minority opinions, or even reducing the influence of political parties. The only system that can guarantee those laudable goals is MMPR (mixed member proportional representation) with a vote threshold of about 5%, so that the clowns don’t get to run the circus.
So I’m proposing a plank in the next campaign which obliges the NDP, if elected government, to change our electoral system to MMPR as a matter of confidence (meaning there will be a new election if it’s defeated). And no cop-out referendum either: change we can believe in.
For a change.
(By the way, how ironic is it that the Liberals elected more female MLAs than we, the party of affirmative action, did? How ironic is it that Leslie McNabb in Comox was widely derided in her local papers for being an affirmative action candidate rather than the best candidate the NDP could put up, and that this certainly cost her votes and maybe the election as well, given a weak and novice Liberal opponent? Ouch.)
Friday, May 15, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
North Island: reflections and gossip
May 13, 2009
The 2009 Provincial Election campaign is in the can, so here are the news, as Edith Josie used to say:
1 signs of an election...
As those of you who read my blog after the municipal elections last November will know, I like to watch the sign campaign unfold.
Ours (Jim’s crew, Deanna’s phoners to identify locations) was textbook, in my opinion the best ever: the signs came out early, there were lots, they looked good, and best of all, we had hardly any on public land or vacant lots. You couldn’t miss the clusters of NDP signs driving into town from the south along the old highway or along Alder, a dominant manifestation of organization and enthusiasm.
By contrast, several days after our first wave had emerged, the vacant lots started to sprout large, ostentatious, Liberal signs. Marion Wright’s photo on them didn’t do her any favours; in fact, they made her look kind of frumpy. The ones identifying Liberal households, when they did finally start to appear were very light on the ground and of the bag variety. They never achieved any significant numbers. Liberal signs implied, “Lots of money, no workers”, which was likely the case.
2 sowing and reaping
What’s up with the teachers of Campbell River?!
Last election quite a number worked on Claire’s first campaign, and I’m told some even helped out financially. Of course, having been seriously screwed over by the government, they had lots of incentive.
This time? Not so much. Their retired colleagues, people of my generation, had their hands all over Claire’s campaign, but I can count on one hand the number of Campbell River teachers who volunteered and on two the number who contributed financially. It could well have been the worst showing ever, and that takes some serious apathy.
The CRDTA leadership was totally absent (in fact, when Shelly asked to use teacher email to encourage her colleagues to get involved, she was rebuffed!), and of course the BCTF, as per tradition, was one of the very few unions not to contribute either locally or provincially. As far as I know, there wasn’t even the traditional central campaign to urge BCTF members to volunteer for the party of their choice.
And what about the BCTF campaign to promote public education? The gag law pretty much pulled its teeth, and although they joined other unions to challenge the law and won, by that time the victory was largely symbolic.
When after the election the government, pleading poverty, screws them over again, will they expect their MLA to forget their lack of support?
Count on it.
3 North Island Libs
I wonder if we’ll ever find out why the Liberal campaign was so limp.
Of course the $70,000 spending ceiling can’t have helped (even we would have had no trouble spending more!) but where were the volunteers distributing leaflets and knocking on doors? Where was the office? Where, for that matter, was the candidate?
Early in the campaign Sandy fielded a call from the Liberals. A south-Asian voice. “Oh, and where are you calling from?” said Sandy. “Uhhh...my office,” said the woman after an obvious and uncomfortable pause. “Maybe you could tell me where I could find Marion Wright’s office,” Sandy then said. “I’ve been looking for it, and I haven’t seen one.” The lady couldn’t tell her.
Our workers spotted Ms Wright at various fundraising and social events around Campbell River, but we had no reports of her campaigning either in Campbell River or elsewhere in the riding. A quick perusal of First Nation websites shows the Liberal candidate shmoozing with various local aborignal leaders, so maybe that was the campaign. To me it’s remarkable that there were no visiting Cabinet Ministers during the campaign, and that the Premier showed only once for a very brief whistle stop right at the end. Pretty weird for a riding Rod Visser lost by under 700 votes last time, and which every newspaper report listed as a “swing” riding.
4 the candidate and the cousin
You had to wonder if the Liberals liked having an aboriginal candidate but really didn’t want to encourage a Marion Wright win.
Three tangential observations on that note:
a) it was never mentioned in public but reasonably well-known that former MLA Rod Visser and Marion were “an item”, and had been, according to rumour (supported by observations), since well before (another rumour, supported by the fact that his daughter now goes by her mother’s maiden name) Rod’s very nasty divorce.
b) Sean Holman reported that the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Authority, chaired by Marion Wright, had been closed down for lack of effectiveness after it had seriously overspent its budget. So much for any claim to fiscal prudence, or for getting things done.
c) The closest the campaign got to nasty was when Christine Hunt, our Northern Organizer and Marion Wright’s cousin, asked Marion at the all-candidates’ in Port Hardy to comment on a forensic audit being done on the Fort Rupert Band’s books (they’re both members) for the time when Marion was the elected Chief. We’d known about the rumour, had already decided not to go there, and clearly Christine shouldn’t have put the question while in our employ. Consequently, Paul, in his Campaign Manager capacity, went to Marion’s office next day to apologize on behalf of the Claire Trevena campaign. But Marion insisted that Claire apologize in public and fire Christine. She made that demand loudly in Port Hardy and again next day at an all-candidates’ in Campbell River. The moderator of the Campbell River meeting had to tell her to stop insisting and the meeting very clearly had no idea of what was going on and was not on her side.
We continued not to use the rumour, and the question hasn’t been answered.
From a purely political point of view Christine should probably have persuaded someone else from the band to pose the question, assuming it was important. But maybe Wright, who appears to me to have particularly thin skin for someone aspiring to political office, is too scary for anyone else from that community to take on.
5 paying the piper...
As the financial agent for Claire’s campaign, I processed all the donations. So I know something about this file.
Every dollar that is raised on behalf of an NDP candidate is split 50-50 with the provincial campaign. That’s only appropriate, and we definitely got our money’s worth this time out. However, that means if a campaign spends the maximum of $70,000, it must raise $140,000; best to have some serious money in the bank before the campaign starts, especially in a recession year like this one, when many of the people who could logically be expected to support us were pretty strapped financially.
Happily, for the first time I know of and thanks to fund raising that started as soon as we had paid off our debt from the last campaign, this time we had half of what we expected to need in the bank by the time the writ was dropped.
The popular wisdom has it that unions pay for NDP campaigns and businesses pay for those run by the Liberals. I don’t have any insight into Liberal funding, but can report that while some unions do contribute (some, like the BCGEU, handsomely), many (like the BCTF) don’t, and the overwhelming bulk of the money raised in a constituency like ours comes from approximately 200 to 300 very ordinary, middle-class people, a disproportionately-large number of them retired.
That funding is absolutely essential in our system, and it continues to astonish me that so many well-educated younger people, the kind who hold down good jobs and are consequently utterly dependent on their political system and government functioning smoothly, don’t feel a need to either contribute or become involved.
Ultimately, that’s just not very smart.
6 and this is potentially brilliant... and scary
Let’s assume Rafe Mair is correct when he accuses Gordon Campbell and the Cronies of plotting to privatize BC.
That would go some way to explaining what must be the most incredible reversal of policy in this province’s history: the government that came in on a platform of having a referendum on treaty negotiations with first nations only 8 years ago is now promising to pass legislation acknowledging aboriginal title and rights to the entire province.
When North Island MLA Claire Trevena dared to question the Klahoose band’s support for Plutonic Power’s plans for Toba, Knight, and Bute inlets last April, she was immediately and loudly declared both paternalistic and racist by Klahoose Chief Ken Brown. As Claire’s record of support for the First Nations of North Island had been pretty-well unassailable to that point, this is an interesting turn of events, to say the least.
But it’s probably an early sign of what’s to come, should the proposed legislation pass.
Environmental activists have been thorns in the government’s paws for decades. They have opposed many of the major extraction projects proposed for the province, from Mac-Blo’s plans for clearcutting the Clayquot in the 80’s, to Shell’s proposal to extract coalbed methane in the “Sacred Headwaters”, to the Tulsequah Mine on the Taku, to the coal mine proposed for the headwaters of the Flathead River... The list goes on. In most of those cases, environmentalists and First Nations have been and are on the same side, and that makes it politically very difficult for the government to help push these projects through.
The proposed legislation changes everything: if First Nations have title and rights to BC, and if they, like the Klahoose, become partners in the development of their “traditional territories”, and if to oppose such development on environmental grounds is “racist” and “paternalistic”, will people like Claire continue to oppose projects on purely environmental grounds?
(Will the NDP caucus oppose the Tsawwassen land claims settlement which permits that band to pave over 200 acres of prime farmland and rent it to Deltaport for container storage? Will Clayquot heroine Tzeporah Berman oppose Plutonic? )
Ooops! Mission accomplished.
We could be running on “Take back your province” for some time, and having to take it back from bands like the Klahoose is beyond ironic.
The 2009 Provincial Election campaign is in the can, so here are the news, as Edith Josie used to say:
1 signs of an election...
As those of you who read my blog after the municipal elections last November will know, I like to watch the sign campaign unfold.
Ours (Jim’s crew, Deanna’s phoners to identify locations) was textbook, in my opinion the best ever: the signs came out early, there were lots, they looked good, and best of all, we had hardly any on public land or vacant lots. You couldn’t miss the clusters of NDP signs driving into town from the south along the old highway or along Alder, a dominant manifestation of organization and enthusiasm.
By contrast, several days after our first wave had emerged, the vacant lots started to sprout large, ostentatious, Liberal signs. Marion Wright’s photo on them didn’t do her any favours; in fact, they made her look kind of frumpy. The ones identifying Liberal households, when they did finally start to appear were very light on the ground and of the bag variety. They never achieved any significant numbers. Liberal signs implied, “Lots of money, no workers”, which was likely the case.
2 sowing and reaping
What’s up with the teachers of Campbell River?!
Last election quite a number worked on Claire’s first campaign, and I’m told some even helped out financially. Of course, having been seriously screwed over by the government, they had lots of incentive.
This time? Not so much. Their retired colleagues, people of my generation, had their hands all over Claire’s campaign, but I can count on one hand the number of Campbell River teachers who volunteered and on two the number who contributed financially. It could well have been the worst showing ever, and that takes some serious apathy.
The CRDTA leadership was totally absent (in fact, when Shelly asked to use teacher email to encourage her colleagues to get involved, she was rebuffed!), and of course the BCTF, as per tradition, was one of the very few unions not to contribute either locally or provincially. As far as I know, there wasn’t even the traditional central campaign to urge BCTF members to volunteer for the party of their choice.
And what about the BCTF campaign to promote public education? The gag law pretty much pulled its teeth, and although they joined other unions to challenge the law and won, by that time the victory was largely symbolic.
When after the election the government, pleading poverty, screws them over again, will they expect their MLA to forget their lack of support?
Count on it.
3 North Island Libs
I wonder if we’ll ever find out why the Liberal campaign was so limp.
Of course the $70,000 spending ceiling can’t have helped (even we would have had no trouble spending more!) but where were the volunteers distributing leaflets and knocking on doors? Where was the office? Where, for that matter, was the candidate?
Early in the campaign Sandy fielded a call from the Liberals. A south-Asian voice. “Oh, and where are you calling from?” said Sandy. “Uhhh...my office,” said the woman after an obvious and uncomfortable pause. “Maybe you could tell me where I could find Marion Wright’s office,” Sandy then said. “I’ve been looking for it, and I haven’t seen one.” The lady couldn’t tell her.
Our workers spotted Ms Wright at various fundraising and social events around Campbell River, but we had no reports of her campaigning either in Campbell River or elsewhere in the riding. A quick perusal of First Nation websites shows the Liberal candidate shmoozing with various local aborignal leaders, so maybe that was the campaign. To me it’s remarkable that there were no visiting Cabinet Ministers during the campaign, and that the Premier showed only once for a very brief whistle stop right at the end. Pretty weird for a riding Rod Visser lost by under 700 votes last time, and which every newspaper report listed as a “swing” riding.
4 the candidate and the cousin
You had to wonder if the Liberals liked having an aboriginal candidate but really didn’t want to encourage a Marion Wright win.
Three tangential observations on that note:
a) it was never mentioned in public but reasonably well-known that former MLA Rod Visser and Marion were “an item”, and had been, according to rumour (supported by observations), since well before (another rumour, supported by the fact that his daughter now goes by her mother’s maiden name) Rod’s very nasty divorce.
b) Sean Holman reported that the Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transition Authority, chaired by Marion Wright, had been closed down for lack of effectiveness after it had seriously overspent its budget. So much for any claim to fiscal prudence, or for getting things done.
c) The closest the campaign got to nasty was when Christine Hunt, our Northern Organizer and Marion Wright’s cousin, asked Marion at the all-candidates’ in Port Hardy to comment on a forensic audit being done on the Fort Rupert Band’s books (they’re both members) for the time when Marion was the elected Chief. We’d known about the rumour, had already decided not to go there, and clearly Christine shouldn’t have put the question while in our employ. Consequently, Paul, in his Campaign Manager capacity, went to Marion’s office next day to apologize on behalf of the Claire Trevena campaign. But Marion insisted that Claire apologize in public and fire Christine. She made that demand loudly in Port Hardy and again next day at an all-candidates’ in Campbell River. The moderator of the Campbell River meeting had to tell her to stop insisting and the meeting very clearly had no idea of what was going on and was not on her side.
We continued not to use the rumour, and the question hasn’t been answered.
From a purely political point of view Christine should probably have persuaded someone else from the band to pose the question, assuming it was important. But maybe Wright, who appears to me to have particularly thin skin for someone aspiring to political office, is too scary for anyone else from that community to take on.
5 paying the piper...
As the financial agent for Claire’s campaign, I processed all the donations. So I know something about this file.
Every dollar that is raised on behalf of an NDP candidate is split 50-50 with the provincial campaign. That’s only appropriate, and we definitely got our money’s worth this time out. However, that means if a campaign spends the maximum of $70,000, it must raise $140,000; best to have some serious money in the bank before the campaign starts, especially in a recession year like this one, when many of the people who could logically be expected to support us were pretty strapped financially.
Happily, for the first time I know of and thanks to fund raising that started as soon as we had paid off our debt from the last campaign, this time we had half of what we expected to need in the bank by the time the writ was dropped.
The popular wisdom has it that unions pay for NDP campaigns and businesses pay for those run by the Liberals. I don’t have any insight into Liberal funding, but can report that while some unions do contribute (some, like the BCGEU, handsomely), many (like the BCTF) don’t, and the overwhelming bulk of the money raised in a constituency like ours comes from approximately 200 to 300 very ordinary, middle-class people, a disproportionately-large number of them retired.
That funding is absolutely essential in our system, and it continues to astonish me that so many well-educated younger people, the kind who hold down good jobs and are consequently utterly dependent on their political system and government functioning smoothly, don’t feel a need to either contribute or become involved.
Ultimately, that’s just not very smart.
6 and this is potentially brilliant... and scary
Let’s assume Rafe Mair is correct when he accuses Gordon Campbell and the Cronies of plotting to privatize BC.
That would go some way to explaining what must be the most incredible reversal of policy in this province’s history: the government that came in on a platform of having a referendum on treaty negotiations with first nations only 8 years ago is now promising to pass legislation acknowledging aboriginal title and rights to the entire province.
When North Island MLA Claire Trevena dared to question the Klahoose band’s support for Plutonic Power’s plans for Toba, Knight, and Bute inlets last April, she was immediately and loudly declared both paternalistic and racist by Klahoose Chief Ken Brown. As Claire’s record of support for the First Nations of North Island had been pretty-well unassailable to that point, this is an interesting turn of events, to say the least.
But it’s probably an early sign of what’s to come, should the proposed legislation pass.
Environmental activists have been thorns in the government’s paws for decades. They have opposed many of the major extraction projects proposed for the province, from Mac-Blo’s plans for clearcutting the Clayquot in the 80’s, to Shell’s proposal to extract coalbed methane in the “Sacred Headwaters”, to the Tulsequah Mine on the Taku, to the coal mine proposed for the headwaters of the Flathead River... The list goes on. In most of those cases, environmentalists and First Nations have been and are on the same side, and that makes it politically very difficult for the government to help push these projects through.
The proposed legislation changes everything: if First Nations have title and rights to BC, and if they, like the Klahoose, become partners in the development of their “traditional territories”, and if to oppose such development on environmental grounds is “racist” and “paternalistic”, will people like Claire continue to oppose projects on purely environmental grounds?
(Will the NDP caucus oppose the Tsawwassen land claims settlement which permits that band to pave over 200 acres of prime farmland and rent it to Deltaport for container storage? Will Clayquot heroine Tzeporah Berman oppose Plutonic? )
Ooops! Mission accomplished.
We could be running on “Take back your province” for some time, and having to take it back from bands like the Klahoose is beyond ironic.
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