All together now -- everyone apologize to Elizabeth May

[madmax]

They Love Me

A political analyses of GP campaign.

Elizabeth May has prepared an analysis of what went well and what went badly in the recent election campaign for the Green Party. I'll summarize it for you.

What went well: Elizabeth May.

What did not go well: Anything that wasn't Elizabeth May

It doesn't get any better hereI am shocked and surprised at the number of consecutive negative comments

If anyone is interested in the full analyses, I will post it. It is long, but very entertaining to any political observer.

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Edited November 11, 2008 by madmax

[Bryan]

It didn't go all that well for May either. She's the only top five party leader not to win a seat.

They better not let her into the debates next time.

Edited November 11, 2008 by Bryan

[M.Dancer]

No campaign planning document was ever prepared that I saw," she wrote. "No campaign discussions and strategy calls took place during the campaign.

"My feeling throughout the campaign was that I was flying by the seat of my pants."

As leader, that would be the leaders fault.

Fringe party, Fringe Leader, Fringe Camapaign.

[Brunopolis]

Half the green party votes, if not more, are all protest votes. They don't want to support any "mainstream" party so they vote for the green party.

Personally, I find Elizabeth May's treasonous behaviour to her own party despicable. Screwing over all her other candidates so she has a shot of winning her riding?

I completely agree with Bryan that she should not be allowed into the debates next time. Particularly with how she backed the Liberals at the last minute.

[M.Dancer]

I have no problem with a party working tirelessly to get their leader a seat. But plainly there isn't a riding in Canada that wants her and why would they? Not like she really cares about local politics...

[madmax]

Apparently Elizabeth May has some splainning to do.

What me Worry

John Ogilvie is member of the Green Party of Ontario, a software CEO, and pretty sharp guy. He sought election as a member of the Ontario legislature in Carleton-Mississippi Mills, so he knows his way around an election. He actually got an endorsement in the 2007 Ontario election from the Ottawa Citizen, so this is no lightweight.

So when I read stuff from him concerning what's going on inside the federal Green Party, I give him the benefit of the doubt.

The big news is that Elizabeth May is criticizing the party for not doing enough to elect any MPs, and in particular, for not doing enough to get her elected. A post-mortem she prepared for the party seems to indicate she considers herself the only good thing in the Green Party campaign.

[madmax]

Here is some excellent post analysis

How to lose an election

It was not the Green Party or mesmerized inexperienced minds on Council who insisted upon waiting until "Mercury was no longer retrograde" before deciding that, wait for it, Central Nova was a better idea over say London. Beyond a reliance on stellar constellations, scientific polling data was also never able to replicate the mysterious premonition Elizabeth May claimed she experienced whereupon Peter McKay would go down to defeat.

Sure, Tiger Woods will tell you a large part of his putting success comes from visualizing the ball into the hole before even making the stroke. But no amount of positive thinking will sink a putt for the elusive green jacket if played from the wrong green, much less the wrong golf course.

No planning? How does one plan for a leader who openly admits she refuses to be scripted?

Simple enough, you prepare a plan anyway and when the person chiefly responsible for executing the plan refuses, over-and-over, to do so, you execute the chief. Or in my case, resign.

There was a plan, a discussion, and a strategy:

[stignasty]

In a section of the document titled, "Factors in our control," May said she had sense of almost constant stress after the campaign began on Sept. 8 -- some of it due to a lack of a clear plan by the party.

"No campaign planning document was ever prepared that I saw," she wrote. "No campaign discussions and strategy calls took place during the campaign.

"My feeling throughout the campaign was that I was flying by the seat of my pants."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...?hub=TopStories

My opinion of May started out quite positive but crept lower as the campaign went on. The excerpt above may be an explanation why that happened.

[bluegreen]

In a section of the document titled, "Factors in our control," May said she had sense of almost constant stress after the campaign began on Sept. 8 -- some of it due to a lack of a clear plan by the party.

"No campaign planning document was ever prepared that I saw," she wrote. "No campaign discussions and strategy calls took place during the campaign.

"My feeling throughout the campaign was that I was flying by the seat of my pants."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor...?hub=TopStories

My opinion of May started out quite positive but crept lower as the campaign went on. The excerpt above may be an explanation why that happened.

May has strengths and weaknesses. She made her greatest mistake immediately after her Leadership win, when she refused to accomodate David Chernshenko, and his organisers. She filled the ranks with some very incompetent people of unquestionable, and unquestioning loyalty to herself personally.

Chernushenko had surrounded himself with all the very best organisers, campaign managers, and staffers. He didn't propose to discard Jim Harris' legacy, simply to displace Jim from the top slot, and do a better job of training and mentoring the grassroots. Elizabeth had a marvelous chance to marry her own very positive media, and public image, with a solid, and experienced core of Campaigners and strategists. She publicly displayed her own political ignorance when she refused to name Chernushenko deputy leader, and thus alienated him, and the vast majority of the skills base with him.

The morons. like Sharon Labchuk, that she was left with couldn't plan a picnic, let alone a campaign. I'm not joking, I've seen Labchuk trying to plan a pizza night for a Campaign team, and it wasn't a pretty sight.

Don't totally discount Elizabeth though. She built the Sierra club into one of the heaviest hitting NGO's in Canada, and she will probably learn something from her mistakes. She'll have to figure out that you have to take good advice from people you don't trust on occasion, especially if those you do trust don't have a clue.

[madmax]

She made her greatest mistake immediately.......

Elizabeth May made no mistakes

It is due to my leadership that we were doing so well, raising our expectations.

And was going to win

In 2008, given the steady work over the last two years to build the party's public profile, it was reasonable to anticipate wins. Our closest result was in my own riding. (Over 32% of the vote with over 12,600 Green votes.).The Central Nova team believed that victory was likely based on polls and the "word on the street." There was panic in the local Conservative ranks.

Members of the Green Party killed the campaign not Elizabeth May.

The reason that last story did not get laid to rest effectively was the unfortunate intervention of dissident Greens calling media and keeping the charges alive. If people alleging they represented the Green Party had phoned reporters to call for my resignation for attending a pro-Hezbollah rally, it would not have mattered that I never had done so. The dissident accusations cemented the story for the media.

And Quebec Wing let Elizabeth Down, She supported the Quebec Parti Vert by not running a candidate in Dions Riding.

Our national results would have been much higher if not for our vote stalling in Quebec. One key factor may be that the provincial Parti Vert is not as supportive of federal Greens as is the case between other provincial parties and Greens federally. We are also less visible in Quebec, although we were beginning to get more "buzz" after the French debate. Clearly, there needs to be an overhaul of the organizing efforts. There were two full-time Quebec organizers before the campaign. Both are no longer working for GPC.

THere was also a heavy media bias against the GP. And Media Bias in Canada is stronger against the GP Canada then Media Bias in the US....

I still believe this was the right message, but the media in Canada was not ready for a message for change. Our national media was working from an old script. Ironically, the media agenda and partisan bias was more fixed in Canada than in the U.S..

It was Mays telegenic performance at whistle stop tours that kept those numbers close to 7%.

Media bias was clearly a major factor in this election. By this, I mean more than the usual media bias against the Green Party. There is no question that our policies were either ignored or misrepresented. Our policy announcements were often completely ignored. If not for a telegenic whistle stop tour, I do not think we would have had any major coverage once the "debate over the debates" was resolved. The times we did the more traditional major photo op media event with a big policy announcement attached, we received nearly zero coverage.

Media bias went beyond deliberate distortion. I believe the Conservative Party let their favourite media mouthpieces know that they wanted the Greens marginalized by treating me as a "bizarre" or "off the wall" (both Mike Duffy and the Macleans piece last year have tried this spin). It is clear to me that CTV orchestrated the situation so that I would be informed on Mike Duffy Live that the consortium had decided to keep me out of the debates. About one minute before being on Mike Duffy's show I bumped into the chair of the consortium, CTV news head Robert Hurst, in the hallway. I shook his hand and asked if there was any news. He managed that encounter without saying a word, with something between a shrug and a nod. Within seconds I was in the chair in Mike Duffy's studio to be told -- live on air -- that the consortium had decided to exclude the Green Party from the debates. So it was a deliberate ploy to spring the news on me in hopes of having a television clip of me over-reacting, being angry or tearful.

May claims that it was a mistake to suspend general election planning, but that isn't her fault.

Greg Morrow has already reported to the FCC his view that it was a mistake to suspend general election planning due to the by-elections (and re-circulating of memos demonstrates he argued this same point at the time and not only from hindsight).

And Elizabeth May makes it clear....

We should have had a campaign plan.

No campaign planning document was ever prepared that I saw. No campaign discussions and strategies calls took place during the campaign.

Thankfully She pulled it off despite this.

That was one of many moments when staying calm kept the party on an upward trajectory. There was not a single day when we did not feel a disaster had been narrowly averted -- from angry homeless people in a walk through of the lower East Side of Vancouver, to press conferences where the press release was not available until I had finished the event, to wrong addresses for live media appearances. There was a near constant sense of stress -- something akin to being in a control tower of a major busy airport and noticing an absence of air traffic controllers.

Elizabeth May identifies the problem

The biggest problem area to sort out by the next campaign is how I can win in my riding (any riding) when I am out of the riding more than half the time. The push and pull is tough. Can we have any kind of decision that the Leader winning in her seat is a top priority? (*the* Top Priority?) If I had been in Central Nova the whole time (except for national debates), I would have won.

I think of Jack Layton taking on Dennis Mills in 2004, when I read the below quote. Or Kim Campbell in 1993. I think David Lewis lost his seat in the 1970s?

To compensate for the reality that the Green Party is the only federal party without a seat for the leader in a safe riding,

The reality is the Green Party is a party without a seat and has never won a seat, including the leader. That the leader did very poorly in her riding is understandable, based upon the media bias against the Green Party.

Elizabeth May says it best herself.

My personal popularity with the Canadian electorate is something, speaking as objectively as possible, that the Green Party needs

Thank Heavens.