1 of 310 – a post-election view

I didn’t get the 500 votes I sought.  In fact, at just 310, I fell considerably short.  Mea culpa.  Many things went wrong, were done wrong, or were simply not done at all.  A passion for policy coupled with a passion for politics is not all it takes to run a campaign for elected office.  For one thing, you have to knock on more doors than I did, which is not something that comes naturally to me.  There’s an inherent fear that I am invading someone’s private life and so will be unwelcome when I knock.  Let’s face it – not everybody is happy when a politician knocks on their door.  And some of them are downright dismissive when that politician is wearing a Green Party pin.    I did knock on some doors, and had profoundly positive reactions at a few of them, besides.  But I didn’t knock on nearly enough.  I think you have to knock on all of them during a campaign.  Twice.

Also, you need more time than I had, both in terms of advance notice that you will even be running a campaign and in terms of having enough ‘free’ time during it.  I had neither of these.  The writ had been dropped nearly a week before I was approached about being a candidate.  Another day passed while I thought about the time commitment and whether I could balance that with my stay-at-home-dadness.  Clearly, since I ran, I decided I could.  But that was before I understood what sort of a time commitment an actual campaign would entail.  I simply didn’t have the time to do it properly.  A month or two notice, and a plan could (and would) have been pretty firmly in place, with a small slate of volunteers to cover everything from canvassing to babysitting.  Ah, but for the curse of time.

I believe I could have obtained the 500 votes I sought – which was roughly 5% of the popular vote – if I had concentrated all of my efforts and all of my free time in my riding, and I am responsible for not having done so.  I could have engaged more directly with the other candidates, could have visited more community events, could (and should) have knocked on more doors.  I could have done all of these things, but the party under whose banner I ran must share some culpability.

Province wide, The Green Party held steady in terms of popular vote.  In 2006, the party participated in its first province wide election and took 2.33% of the vote.   In 2009, in its second provincial election, the Greens took 2.33% of the vote.  Deja vu all over again.  So why the three year steady climb to end in the same place?

For one, there was no steady climb for the Green Party.  In the three years between elections, I can think of no meaningful attempts by the Green Party to insert itself into the political dialogue of Nova Scotia nor into the political consciousnesses of Nova Scotian citizens.  In the months leading up to the drop of the election writ, which only the most politically disinterested or uniformed could have failed to see coming, there appears to have been no concerted effort from the party to line up viable, interested, and interesting candidates.  And then, once the candidates were lined up, there was no candidate training, little advice or support from the central party leadership, and no central plan for a cohesive campaign.  We had 52 mini-campaigns instead, one for each riding, run with widely varying degrees of devotion.  Every party had some parachute or paper candidates, meaning people who were little more than names on the ballot so that the parties might be represented in all of the ridings, but the Green Party had more than the others.  In this dubious field, at least, the Greens were number one.

It was no way to run an election, and without a lot of growing up, the party would have no way to run the province.  Which was, after all, the job we were technically applying for.  I think I’d like to help the party grow up.  It needs specific (and costed) policies, and riding associations.  It needs clearer communication from the leadership and executive through the party ranks.  It needs to form a shadow government, to follow the workings of our new legislature.  It needs to applaud our new NDP government for the things it does right and offer constructive advice and insight on how that government might do things better.  It needs to get out in the community, and make its presence felt.

So many people I talked to over the course of this past campaign thought the Green party was the Marijuana Party.  And many more others believed it was a single issue, environmental party.  That’s a branding problem, and the perception of the Green brand in Nova Scotia will be one of the greatest hurdles for the party to overcome.  Especially if it doesn’t even try to.

Lest I should convey the wrong impression, I do believe in the Green Party, and I do believe it can have an important role to play in the future of the Nova Scotian political discourse.  We lost a lot of votes to the NDP this time around, simply because it was a great orange wave – or Orange Crush, as the Herald headline put it on June 10 – and Nova Scotians en masse seemed determined to put Mr. Dexter in the Premier’s office with a huge majority behind him.  A pre-election Angus-Reid poll showed that the Greens lost as much as 50% of their support to the NDP in the 2009 election.  Given that, it may be remarkable that the party even held steady at 2.33% of the vote.  We must have picked up a good number of votes from PC supporters to have done so.

Personally, I enjoyed seeing and working an election from the candidate side of things for a change.  It gave me a deep appreciation for the difficulties of the task.  And while I had enormous criticism to heap on the central party campaigns, comprised as they were of attack ads, meaningless soundbites, and politics-as-usual promises made, the candidates running in my own riding were all intelligent, decent and respectable people.  Colin Hebb, the young man running under the Liberal banner in my riding, particularly impressed me – and I would like have voted for him had I not had such an excellent Green candidate to support.  George Jordan, the candidate for the PCs, gave me the impression that he honestly cared about the riding and the province, and I respect him for that and for his involvement.  Plus he has an awesome voice.  Marilyn More, the NDP incumbent who again won handily this time, will continue to do a good job of representing her constituents, but this time with a view of Province House from the government side of things.  And good for her.  I wish her all the best, because she is my representative in government now, so her best is my best.

I am not done with politics in Nova Scotia, nor am I done with policy.  When the Legislative Assembly reconvenes, I and some of my fellow Greens will be there.  We will not sit in the House itself, because Nova Scotians have not given us that right.  But we will be in the visitor’s galley, watching the business of the house, taking notes and making plans.  We will criticize where criticism is called for and praise where it is warranted.  We will bring our ideas to the government in power, with the reminder that good ideas are good ideas and in matters of good governance and smart public policy, the origin of those ideas is irrelevant.  Good ideas can, and should, be stolen.  I encourage Mr. Dexter to hear the advice that all other parties have to offer.  I encourage him to hear the good ideas all Nova Scotians have to offer.

I believe Darrell Dexter has the potential to be a powerful proponent for positive social change in our province, and that all Nova Scotians should do what they can to encouragingly nudge him in that direction.  In the meantime, the Green Party has some remodelling and some cleaning to do in its own house.  Not until it has gone some considerable distance in that direction can it reasonably ask Nova Scotians to support it at the polls.