Are there alternatives to the traditional all-candidate meeting that can work better?
By Bill Cleverley, Victoria Times Colonist, November 13, 2011
Ben has been door-to-door canvassing since Labour Day to meet Victoria's 65,000 eligible voters
To some, all-candidate meetings are a vital way to connect with voters. Others think of them as a dubious exercise in preaching to the converted.
“I call them political rituals, quite frankly,” says University of Victoria Lansdowne professor of social policy Michael Prince.
“Very few undecided come to these sorts of events. They’re often carefully scripted. There’s often people in the audience planted with questions for my candidate or to ask your candidate a hostile question to put someone off guard.”
Faced with three hours in a hall with 75 to 100 people that might only provide minutes behind the microphone, some council candidates are increasingly wondering whether time put in at all-candidates meetings could be better spent elsewhere.
Victoria council candidate Ben Isitt makes no bones about slipping in and out of some all-candidate meetings. At a recent one in James Bay, he showed up in time to address the assembly, slipped out during the mayoral candidate debates to make sure his campaign was firing on all cylinders, and then returned for the forum’s end to shake hands and answer any questions.
Isitt says there is a balancing act.
“I think the people who come out [to all-candidate forums] are the most engaged citizens, so I think it is important,” he says. “But what they do say about these meetings is that more than half – and quite a bit more than half in many cases – already have their minds made up. They’re either a candidate or they’re a partisan supporter of a candidate, a campaign manager or a spouse or a volunteer.”
Surveying the crowd packed into a recent all-candidate forum in the Belfry Theatre lobby, veteran Victoria Coun. Chris Coleman recognizes a lot of faces.
“There are some people who are coming in to learn, but most of them are friends of friends,” Coleman says.
If you do the math, an argument certainly can be made for giving preference to other aspects of the campaign, Isitt says.
“My estimate would be maybe 1,000 residents will make it out to one of the all candidate meetings,” he says. “There’s about eight or nine [meetings] scheduled. So the question is: ‘What happens to the other 64,000 eligible voters?’ “
Still, Kimanda Jarzebiak, who managed successful election campaigns for former Victoria mayor Alan Lowe and is heading Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard’s re-election bid, worries that in this era of interactive media, a candidate risks too big a penalty for an empty chair at an all-candidate forum.
“I think there was an era where oneway input was accepted because television and radio were our primary mediums for information and they were one way,” she says. “People now are expecting to get as close to the candidate as possible, via email or in person.”
Some groups, such as the Fernwood Community Association, have taken to hosting trade-fair styled events where members of public move from booth to booth as a way to let residents interact with different candidates.
Association president Tony Sprackett says that with upward of 20 candidates in a council race, the old format wasn’t working for either the candidates or the public.
“With the number of candidates, it’s very frustrating for them because they don’t get to speak to their issues,” Sprackett says. “I’ve heard many times [that] it’s very frustrating for the candidates and I think a lot of the value for the voter is lost in that kind of situation. Our hope is that just being able to go up and speak to them, they’ll get more out of it. ”
That was Victoria resident Jan Dent’s experience after attending the forum in the Belfry lobby.
“You get a better chance to have a real dialogue with the candidate,” he says.
UVic political scientist Janni Aragon says most candidates will use a shotgun approach – trying everything from doorknocking to leafleting to all-candidate forums in the hope something connects.
Experienced campaigners like Jarzebiak divide an election campaign into two areas – the air war and the ground war. The air campaign is made up of elements such as advertising, policy sessions, all-candidates meetings and media interviews. The bread and butter of the campaign is on the ground and comprised of door-knocking and the phone bank.
“That is simply identifying those people who are going to vote for you and making sure that they go and do that. That is the most important part of any campaign,” she says.
That’s not lost on candidates like Coleman or Isitt.
Coleman, a four-term incumbent, doorknocks all year round – taking an afternoon or two a month, even in off-election years, to check in with residents on the doorstep. Isitt has been door-knocking since Labour Day for this campaign.
But not everyone is a believer.
Victoria incumbent Coun. Philippe Lucas is doing no door-knocking in this campaign and instead is main-streeting – meeting potential voters in neighbourhood centres like Cook Street Village.
“I think it allows people to step into your bubble without invading their privacy,” Lucas says. “I think it’s been a really effective and efficient way to meet people and share views and ideas.”
Others agree you can shake a lot of hands main-streeting, but say that in a city like Victoria – where more than 60 per cent of residents are renters – you want to meet with homeowners because they are most likely to vote. And the best place to do that is on the doorstep.
While it would be a mistake to ignore social media, some think the sites can give a candidate a false sense of support.
“Your friends are going to obviously like the page. They’ll re-tweet. You’ll sense support that way. You might have friends liking it but it might be someone you went to school with 20 years ago and they’re living in Florida now and they don’t have a vote Nov. 19,” Isitt says.
“If it came down to a ground campaign versus a web-based campaign, the ground campaign should always trump.”
A year ago, businessman Barry Hobbis, who ran in a byelection for Victoria council, tried to connect with voters by hosting B.C.’s first town hall using teleconferencing technology.
The system phoned 18,000 landlines in Victoria and invited people to stay on for the town hall. At the highest point, 7,000 were connected. More than 4,000 stayed on the line for more than 10 minutes and fully 500 people stayed connected for more than 45 minutes, says Mat Wright, who was Hobbis’s campaign manager.
One of the downsides, Wright says, was that it was expensive, costing about $5,000 – pushing it out of reach for most municipal wannabes.
“That’s always one of the issues. How much money do you want to spend when there’s only 20 to 25 per cent of the people who are eligible to vote actually bothering to. – We had to sacrifice other stuff like advertising,” Wright says.
Aragon called Hobbis’s telephone town hall fascinating.
“It was amazing. There were retired grandmothers asking pointed questions, to college-age people, people in their 30s and 40s. There were different sorts of questions and not softball questions that the campaign had pitched,” she says.
Fascinating as it was to the political junkie, on voting day Hobbis was soundly defeated by NDP-and labour-backed candidate Marianne Alto – losing by a margin of 4,529 votes to 3,220 despite outspending her $29,170 to $17,035.
Looking back, Hobbis says a big factor in Alto’s win was her ground game, including the NDP’s much-vaunted ability to have volunteers canvass and work phone banks to get out the vote.
“[It's] making those hundreds and hundreds of phone calls to get people out to vote; organized data up the ying yang and lots of volunteers. In my view, that’s how you deal with apathy,” Hobbis says.
