Campaign trail enlivening

Unlike the outgoing mayor-cum-senator, this candidate likes politics and meetings

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

With just ten days to go in the civic election campaign, I have a few observations to make from my own experience on the campaign trail as an independent hoping to win a seat on Council.

I was told, and had always believed, that campaigning for political office is an exhausting hard slog that no sane person would wish upon their worst enemy. It’s not true. I haven’t found campaigning at all hard. Granted, most events happen in the evening which requires rejigging dinner plans at home (or not getting dinner), but it’s not like you spent all day at meetings—like maybe some of the attending public have.

It’s true that it can be exhausting having to listen to lengthy convoluted questions and delivering back answer. But then, that’s what politics is, and complaining about that is a bit like a janitor complaining about toilets.

I have the last few weeks sat in the audience as often as on the stage at all candidates meetings, and there is no question that these meetings are a much more exhausting experience for the audience than it is for the participants. As an audience member, I was waiting interminably for the end; as a participant, I was always gung ho for another question even if it would have taken us past midnight. I was more enlivened after a meeting, not less, if I was on stage.

It’s true that as a candidate you can be button-holed by some people who can talk your ear off about something you never heard about and have a hard time learning about from them. It’s just never happened to me so far, so I can’t say what it’s like. Not enough has ever been said by candidates about the people who talk your ear off and give you some of the best lines you could ever hope to use in a speech. The best applause I’ve gotten at meetings have been with stolen lines handed to me by the types who corner you in the back of a room with their eyes on fire.

I have been lucky in my campaign in many more ways too. They say independents cannot get any media coverage. I have noticed that candidates for council, both party affiliated and independent, get little coverage in general. But I have gotten more than my fair share of coverage as a council candidate and as an independent, so much so that were I a party-backed candidate, I would be dashing off accusatory letters to all the media demanding to know what that Kevin Potvin has done to get all the ink.

It’s true that not all organizers of all-candidate meetings have made space for me as an independent on stage, usually with the same excuse: they can’t accommodate them all, so they choose none. It’s too bad they don’t pick any simple system, like being bold enough to choose one, or perhaps conducting a quick lottery. It isn’t that hard, and the ones who don’t get selected might complain, but so what? They complain anyway, you lose nothing.

But I can’t complain here either. I’ve been on as many stages as any single candidate from any of the parties, and maybe more of them. What’s more, I’ve noticed that sometimes when I am on stage, the candidates from the same party have to take turns on questions, whereas I, as a loner, get to answer all the questions.

What I have noticed is that all the advantages that party candidates have don’t necessarily translate into any sort of edge with the electorate. Party candidates might come prepared on specific issues geared to a particular crowd at a meeting, for instance, whereas I have no such advance team. But then I see those candidates reading off those prepared statements and I see the audience’s collective minds falling off a cliff. When I come up and I look as though I am thinking as I talk (because I have to be, not having been prepared for the questions beforehand), I find the audience is listening.

People know councilors, or Council as a whole, can’t solve problems just like that and they know the solutions are never obvious or easy. They don’t expect, I believe, councilors to know everything and promise to do great deeds, and nor are they terribly interested in past glorious achievements. My experience so far has led me to believe that what the public wants most of all is to know someone up there hears them and cares.

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