The Candidate Page 8
“The campaign manager is crucial,” he said. “But so is the campaign organizer.”
“I don’t know how much I’ll be in a position to choose,” I said. “I asked the party to foot the bill and it seems they might. But if they do, it’s their call, really.”
“We must run the name of your campaign manager by my brother,” said Lewis. “Michael ran campaigns no one thought he would win.”
This was good news. Michael had worked with the NDP for twenty-four years, and with the United Steelworkers Union for another eighteen, where his job was to liaise with the party. He’d worked in riding development and on campaigns from B.C. to Nova Scotia.
The bill came, I reached, Lewis took it.
“The candidate never pays,” he said. “These months will cost you enough.”
Two days later I received an email from Lewis. Ever the producer, I worried he was writing to say he’d be out of the country and unable to speak at my nomination. But it said:
Dear Noah: I’ve spoken at length to my brother, and he’s checking on people. Unfortunately, the two party types whom he would wish to consult are on vacation. He’ll continue to try to reach them. In the meantime, perhaps you can suggest that you’d like to wait until you’re the formal candidate before settling on a campaign manager. On the other hand, if it becomes too awkward, or difficult with constituency colleagues, then take the suggestion of the establishment, and if necessary we can try to work around it.
Truth to tell, most of the sterling campaign managers are already committed (rather like members of your own executive).
I thoroughly enjoyed our lunch. Michele and I will enthusiastically put up a sign and we’ll contribute financially. But I’ll be goddamned if I’ll canvass. I’m too old.
I had more than a speaker: I had a patron.
—
In the meantime, Marno had arranged for the Election Planning Committee—several members of the riding executive and an equivalent number of friends of mine—to meet. The riding list had been taken out of my hands for others to call, and we discussed fundraising and campaign logistics. Marno presented two slim-line budgets: one for $50,000 for a five-week campaign, and another at $70,000 for ten weeks, “a Cadillac for Toronto—St. Paul’s.” Each took into account signs and a staff such as Heller had delineated, the difference lying principally in higher wage costs for the paid positions of campaign manager, volunteer organizer and office manager, extra campaign literature and extended rent for an office, desks, phone lines, computers and so on. Marno said photographs of me were needed if we were to meet the party deadline for discounted orders of lawn and window signs and candidate literature. I was raring to go and, though the election writ had not yet been dropped, set about the task of fundraising immediately after the meeting was dissolved. I certainly wanted to have some sort of pamphlet at hand when, if only for training, I began canvassing. We had started our preparations late, and if literature was to be ready for August then photographs would need to be taken as soon as possible. Ray offered to arrange for Ilich Mejia, a professional photographer and a soccer-playing pal of his, to shoot them over the weekend—and, even better, said Ilich would do so pro bono.
“You have to tell the official agent,” said Marno.
“It was free,” I said, pleased with myself.
“Everything has a value that has to be recorded, or we’ll be in trouble. We can’t exceed the statutory limit.”
“That’s unlikely,” I said.
A campaign is not allowed to exceed the dollar limits stipulated, when the election begins, by Elections Canada, and gifts in kind—from chairs loaned to a campaign office, to donated room space or specialized labour—are evaluated in dollar terms and applied against the ceiling. We expected the limit to be in the region of $90,000 for a five-week campaign starting in the first week of September.
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Sarah, the spouse (not the “political wife”):
I wasn’t prepared in supporting Noah’s run for just how sexist the political world is. One of the first things Julian Heller said to me was “It’s often harder on the spouse than the candidate!” This seemed crazy to me. In the beginning I’d talked about taking a sabbatical, but Noah insisted there was no need, and I fully expected to continue to go to work and do my job while Noah was out there knocking on doors, talking to strangers and trying to engage people. Canvassing and debating other candidates in public fora seems like a kind of hell to me, but I wasn’t going to be the one putting myself on the line—he was. Still, people would ask me, “How does it feel to be a political wife?” and I’d stop myself from saying, “If I defined myself in terms of what my husband did then I suppose I might feel more put upon than I actually do!” I’m married to Noah, he’s my partner in life, but I certainly do not see myself in the position of being “his” anything. I resist labels, and “political wife” was never one I was going to take on. It amazed me that even people I’d known for years used it.
—
Friends in places right and wrong: Heller telephoned to inform me of a fundraising event that one of Toronto—St. Paul’s two city councillors, the “unaligned” leftie Joe Mihevc, was hosting to aid not my cause but those of neighbouring NDP candidates Andrew Cash, the sitting MP for Davenport, and Jennifer Hollett, the opponent of Liberal Chrystia Freeland in University—Rosedale.
“Their war chests are way ahead of ours,” said Heller.
“And they’re doing it in our riding, the one with a whopping $350, our constituents about to be sapped for other candidates?”
“Yes.”
“And Mulcair is going to be there?”
Silence.
“It’s unconscionable,” said Heller, “that the leader would countenance a councillor playing both sides of the fence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mihevc is supporting the NDP, but not where he lives.”
“What the fuck,” I said. “I’m going to call Hollett and Cash. Some party.”
“Don’t,” said Heller. “Jennifer’s organizer called. They want to cooperate.”
I was livid. I couldn’t imagine that residents in a riding with poor chances would give twice, and felt shackled before I’d started. Some debut.
As if sensing trouble in the ether, Marno called to talk me off the ledge.
“We’re not sure Cash and Hollett had access to our members’ lists,” said Marno.
“Come on. If they had any decency they’d give me a third of the money that they raise.”
“The event was planned before you were on board.”
“But it’s in our riding.”
“Yes.”
“Whatever.”
“Listen to me,” said Marno. “You’re going to go. You’re going to be seen. And you’re going to be nice to Joe Mihevc.”
Which was what Sarah, hardly enthusiastic about her first appearance as the “political wife” she was not, was also telling me to do. Come the Saturday, the pair of us drove along St. Clair West, found a parking spot by the nearby McDonald’s, and walked up a pleasant residential street in a district I barely knew to the house where some young volunteers in NDP-orange T-shirts were milling in the driveway.
The party was in the backyard. Another volunteer, sitting at a desk by the garage, asked me for my name.
“Noah Richler,” I said. “I’m the NDP candidate for Toronto—St. Paul’s. That would be here.”
Sarah gave me a stern look and telegraphed the smile I was to wear just as the woman standing next to me asked if I lived in the riding.
“No,” I said.
“Where do you?” the woman asked.
“Cabbagetown.”
“Don’t you think that’s a problem?” she said in ornery fashion.
“You know how expensive and difficult it is to move house in Toronto,” I said. “But if the vote goes our way I’ll be putting roots down here.”
This was news to Sarah, and to me, though I was confident she would hav
e clocked the undetailed stating of my commitment—an office would constitute “roots,” no?
“Don’t you think you need to be in the riding now?”
“Well,” I said, gathering up the arguments I’d practised with Boutilier, “it seems to me most of the challenges Torontonians have to contend with are true across the GTA—transit, infrastructure. Of course there are some issues particular to Toronto—St. Paul’s and I’ll see to those, but the truth is that you’ve not had a serious NDP candidate in the riding for a long time and I aim to be that.”
Say we, never you, I thought, as Sarah nudged me on into the garden.
“Remember not to cross your arms,” said Sarah.
In the backyard, I recognized Cash. He was standing with the musician Jason Collett and Jennifer Hollett. A former MuchMusic VJ, Hollett had studied at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and was in her element. The political adventure that was, to me, an exercise in democratic participation I did not expect to win (at least at the outset) was, to Hollett, a vocation relentlessly pursued to which all of her social media experience needed to be applied. Jennifer had a couple of people with her, one of them her campaign manager.
“The campaign manager is the most important person on your team,” said Hollett. “Make sure you get the right one.”
She said to call if I needed anything and, from this first moment of our meeting, proved to be the most helpful of my fellow GTA candidates. I felt suitably chastened. Then Tom Mulcair entered the backyard with his French-born Sephardic Turkish wife, Catherine Pinhas. A burly, bearded photographer in his fifties followed, motioning for the candidates and party leader to gather for a group shot. I stepped back—despite explicit instructions from Heller to get a photograph that could be posted on social media—but, as I did so, Mulcair took my hand and said how pleased he was that I was a part of the team. “Are you going to be okay?” he joked. I introduced Sarah and, not missing a beat, Mulcair smiled broadly and said he would telephone if he needed publishing advice, what with his autobiography Strength of Conviction having just been released.
The photographer, Marc de Mouy, introduced himself and told me how excited he was I was running in his riding. Mulcair was ushered past and I headed to the bottom of the garden in anticipation of his speaking. On my way, I was stopped by a middle-aged woman wearing a small blue porkpie hat and holding a dog on a lead.
“Do you live in the riding?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
The woman’s smile spoke to a certain agitation and I braced. I was about to be put on the spot again—had better get used to it—and needed not just my wits but a generosity of spirit if this politicking gig was to work out at all.
I embarked on the same answer I had provided minutes before. Once sorted, a politician’s words are quickly repeated.
“And Toronto—St. Paul’s is actually extraordinarily diverse. Would you feel I had more in common with this part of the riding, that strikes me as being quite a bit like Cabbagetown, if I lived in Forest Hill?”
“Keep it simple,” whispered Sarah in my ear. “Remember what Atwood said. You’re getting too complicated.”
“Do you have a dog?” the woman asked.
“Two.”
“You should bring them to the dog park. You’ll meet the riding that way.”
The suggestion seemed familiar and I realized that, following the publication of the Toronto Star piece, the woman had already tweeted her dissatisfaction that I was not living in the riding at me. It was evident that nothing I could say was going to be particularly winning—or needed to be. There would be more significant issues.
“Did that get you down?” Sarah asked.
“No,” I said. “I think folk just want to have made the point. And besides, it’s all they know about me so far.”
Mihevc stepped up to the microphone standing on the small riser at the foot of the garden. He welcomed Cash and Hollett and then mumbled a thrown-away fundraising ask before introducing Mulcair badly. Delivering a paean to Jack Layton, with whom he’d worked when the late NDP leader was a Toronto city councillor, Mihevc mentioned none of Mulcair’s own bona fides, like he wasn’t even a guest at the party. But the NDP leader, polls in his favour, took to the stage with a broad smile: a new day was dawning.
“It’s amazing what leading does for a person,” said Sarah. “He’s so confident.”
This was true. Mulcair was beaming. He embraced Cash and Hollett and congratulated the Davenport MP for the work he’d done getting the Conservatives’ tax on tampons lifted.
“He reminds me of an old-fashioned political statesman from the fifties,” said Sarah. “I like him—and I love that he’s talking about tampons.”
And then Mulcair did what Mihevc had not and gave the riding’s candidate a shout-out, looking for me in the small crowd and asking that I join him on stage.
“He’s smart, too,” said Sarah, nudging me forward.
Mulcair congratulated his team but left quickly after that, his campaign already on. I mingled and chatted with a few guests who mentioned, apologetically, they’d given money to other ridings (information not solicited by me), and with a father and son polling duo from Alberta who told me, excitedly, how they had known a good week ahead of the result that Rachel Notley would win.
“Ninety percent of the vote depends on the performance of the leader in the last three weeks of the campaign,” I said. “Notley is fabulous.”
On our way out of the garden, Cash’s partner, Michelle Shook, stepped away from the group gathered around her husband to have a quiet word.
“Don’t believe people who say you can’t win the first time,” she said. “Andrew did.”
I appreciated Michelle’s friendliness in what had otherwise been a curious debut, and appreciated that her husband had been forthcoming too. My frustration about the event, I realized, had been out of order.
But the councillor was a problem. I looked for Mihevc, to say goodbye, and found him with a couple of constituents at the foot of the garden. When finally he did break away, I suggested that we meet sometime and asked how best to be in touch; he said his office number was on his website. It was clear there was to be no support there. Safely out of earshot, I told Sarah, “I’m going to have to win this riding without him.”
—
The nomination meeting less than a week away, I pushed on with fundraising. This was not so easy. As with any writing I do, the first matter of business was to determine what was my authority to put pen to paper in the first place. What gave me the right to ask for other people’s money? What was I offering? What made my project in any way distinct? Targeting whom to ask for money was fairly straightforward; figuring out the how was another story. It took me a good few days to determine whatever were plausibly the grounds that allowed me to ask for people to spend money they would not see back. The conversation—about why I was running at all—was, in the first instance, with myself.
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DRAFT OF TEXT FOR (MAJOR) FUNDRAISING ASK
Hi _____________
[PERSONALIZE FIRST PARAGRAPH, GIVE DETAILS OF NOMINATION MEETING AND FOLLOW WITH]
I am, like many, profoundly disturbed at the changes in the way Canada is being governed, the divisions that have been deliberately used to divide the community and the damage that nearly ten years of “Harper Government” has done at home and to our international reputation, too.
I believe that the reliance of the “Harper government” upon enmity for political expediency’s sake is hurting the country in numerous ways but I am also not satisfied with Justin Trudeau as an alternative.
I believe that Tom Mulcair and the New Democratic Party offer the best, most progressive and exciting way forward. Finally Mulcair is being recognized as the force that he is in Parliament, a man of integrity and the impassioned leader of a party replete with talented and dedicated MPs that have already proved themselves so capable in opposition, and who are eager and rea
dy to serve. I think of Niki Ashton, who represents a riding two thirds the size of France, who speaks four languages and is studying Cree; of the so-called McGill Four, twenty-somethings that have only impressed; or of Paul Dewar, Megan Leslie, Craig Scott and a host of others. Ever since the leadership campaign of 2012, when it first occurred to me to run, the NDP has revealed itself to be a party of diversity, intelligence and vitality. I am not easy on my bosses, and I can tell you that watching Tom last Saturday at a local fundraiser, I absolutely knew that I had made the right choice.
[GET TO THE MONEY ASK, YOU’RE TAKING TOO LONG]
The truth of a political campaign is that it costs money—$70,000 to $100,000 for a good one. The situation I am facing in Toronto—St. Paul’s is that both my Liberal and Conservative rivals have very substantial amounts of money, likely the maximum, and I have—well, at last count, $350. I am asking you to make a donation not just for the riding to be able to pay for the campaign of which we are worthy—one in which we can afford the printing and the signs and office quarters and staff—but to ensure, no matter your affiliation (I am making no assumptions), a contest in which the serious issues of our day are rigorously discussed. Let us, together, work towards a better, healthier debate and democracy and away from Harper’s Canada, in which science and statistics and contrary opinion are reviled.
The next election is one of the most important that has ever faced Canada. The money you give will ensure not just a vigorous local campaign but combat electoral apathy. It will help get out, as I shall be working hard to do, the young and the marginalized and to ensure that whatever course the country chooses, the decision will be one in which the population at large has participated.
For these reasons, I am asking you to donate to my campaign.
[ADD DONATION INSTRUCTIONS AND FIND PERSONAL WAY TO SIGN OFF]
—
Such an easy index, money is. Money is vindication, a barometer of friends’ and colleagues’ confidence. Already, I was scouring my personal contacts lists with a view to identifying who was likely to pony up. Writers, I’d warned the team from the start, were rarely flush and prone to complaining about not being paid for this or that even as they indulged in the “culture of free.” No great expectations there, but I knew I’d pitch writers anyway, they were the pals I had, though I marked them down in Category Three on the “Noah’s Contacts” Excel sheet I was preparing for my fundraising asks. Category One stood for “wealthy and powerful and likes me, so go for it”; Category Two was pretty well the same but for people perhaps living out of the riding or unlikely to give for various reasons but give it a try anyway; Category Three was for impecunious, what the hell, but don’t dwell on it; and Category Four was for those who’ve already given, or who are broke, or not well, so try last of all.