Our Strategic Choice in Provincial 2014

The boss asked for some space to talk about this household’s strategic choice in the 2014 Provincial election. Here it is:

There have been a number of insane and annoying reactions to the open letter to Andrea Horwath from the 32 disaffected long-time social democrats and from Gerry Caplan over her decision not to support Kathleen Wynn’s budget and to plunge Ontario into a wildcat electoral jamboree. The most insane was Robin Sears’s efforts to calm the troubled waters with some of his expert Earnescliffe Strategy Group advice. The various panels that Steve Paikin and Peter Mansbridge assembled on the subject were equally daft. Their reactions ranged from partisan glee, to puzzlement, to absolute nuttiness. A Toronto NDP riding association president asked rhetorically: “Who are these people anyway?” Other panelists kindly offered to help her out with identification. One of the Mansbridge panel suggested that these were people who mostly joined the NDP to tear up their membership cards as a way of showing how pure they were. And someone went on to suggest that if the letter writers actually wanted to be helpful, they should have sent in their suggestions discreetly in the time between the budget rollout and Andrea’s fatal decision.

As a bit of a reality check, I formally  joined NDP the day after the 1993 federal election. I’d been trying to join for the five years since the 1988 election, but the federal party “assumed” that I was only interested in donating money. I have had an active membership continuously for two decades. I spent most of the first decade of the new millennium devoting a lot of time to media and communication in Beaches East York. I decided not renew my membership sometime in 2013. I received regular calls from provincial office over the past year about renewing my membership. I have told the canvassers that I was not renewing because I had profound objections to the neutering of the federal party under Jack Layton and Thomas Mulcair and to Andrea Horwath’s clear commitment not to be outflanked on the right by the Hudak party provincially. I gave lots of examples, like the pandering, stupid “affordability agenda.” I remember telling one canvasser that I had a lot of difficulty telling the difference between Hudak’s and Horwath’s messaging. Initially, the canvassers simply wrote me off as a crank. They started to call asking for other members of the household and  promised to call back when Jennifer or Brenda were home. However, they kept calling me as well. Recently, it was pretty clear that canvassers had been hearing what I was telling them from lots of other people. One canvasser actually wrote down some of the things I said to pass on to the person in charge of the phone bank. The point is that they knew how badly the Horwath act was playing among lapsed party members and donors—a song and dance routine that features a rightward shuffle and an aria from a new experimental tone-deaf opera called The Steeltown Scrapper. What the phone banks had been hearing loudly and clearly and confidentially made absolutely no difference. Andrea went ahead anyway and pulled the plug on the most progressive Ontario budget in a long time. Today, channelling the Boy Emperor, she actually referred to her party as the “New Democrat Party.”

The day that the budget decision was announced, Jennifer called to ask me if I knew what she had done. After ascertaining who she was, clear instructions were issued. Under no circumstances was that party to get another single cent of our money. She had canvassed for Michael Prue before she was old enough to vote. She had put in countless hours at boring NDP youth fests. She felt stabbed in the back. It was a pretty common reaction in this household. What to do? The phone calls were coming fast and furiously from the Michael Prue Campaign. Apparently Michael, like Andrea Horwath’s bus wrapper, “makes sense.” I eventually found a way to donate to the campaign that avoided endorsing Horwath’s insane course. In one of the calls I agreed to put up a sign, modified with my own message. It took a bit of time to find a sign and craft a message. As the campaign wore on, there was a gift to local social democracy from Kathleen Wynn. She appointed an unsavoury lobbyist named Arthur Potts to run as the Liberal candidate in Beaches East York. The message to be added to the fine sign that our media-com workgroup put together for Michael Prue’s 2007 campaign became clear. Michael Prue was our strategic choice in 2001 and remains our strategic choice in 2014.

The provincial election sign I put out on 27 May 2014 after a great deal of consideration. It was a sign that our campaign literature group produced for Michael in 2007. Rob McIntyre was the designer. It was produced at Stanley Manufacturing in our riding. It has a GCIU label. It supports the best strategic choice in Beaches East York in 2014. The blue label (“Our strategic choice since 2001. Approved by this household.”) has been attached.