As I made clear in my previous post, my “machine” comprises volunteers, friends, donors, and a diverse group of supporters who have made this campaign fun. I really hope I have the stuff to make it successful. But what about the New Westminster and District Labour Council? If it isn’t a “slate”, it isn’t a “party”, it isn’t an all-powerful shadowy cabal bent on power, what is it? 

*I need to emphasise here, I am not speaking on behalf of the Labour Council, nor have I asked their permission to print this or asked them to review this. Everything below is what I have learned from my experience as a first time candidate that has been endorsed by the Labour Council. Other candidates may have different views and different experiences, and I can’t speak for them.*

When I started thinking about running for City Council in the spring, I reached out to several people for advice, including my immediate support group, a few prominent local business people, some volunteers on boards around town that I’ve worked with, and some of the current Council. I also went to City Hall and had a meeting with the Mayor.

I asked basic questions: what’s it like? Is my understanding of the job accurate? Am I electable? Through all of these conversations, I received nothing but encouragement, and more than a little advice.

Several people advised me to send a note to the Labour Council to let them know I was considering running, and so I did. A few weeks later they sent me an application for endorsement. It was a survey similar to the ones I have filled out with the NewsLeader, Record, Vancouver Sun, Dogwood Initiative, Alliance for the Arts, etc., and not unlike the questions I am being asked at the doorstep: Why are you running? What is your history in the City? Why should people vote for you? What do you think are the City’s biggest issues? I thoughtfully filled it out, and a few weeks later I received an invitation for an interview. 

At the interview, it was more of the same. I was asked questions about the Pattullo Bridge (something I was happy to talk about!), about solid waste management (another topic I was comfortable with), about examples of my community service (an easy one), and about what my plan was to get elected- did I have a support team? Did I have any idea how to fundraise? Did I have any name recognition in the City? It was a friendly and non-confrontational discussion, and my impression coming out of it was they were mostly interested to see if I knew my stuff, was able to present myself as a rational and reasonable individual.

A month or more later, I was informed that I should anticipate receiving NWDLC endorsement, and that I should contact the other endorsed candidates to determine if we wanted to work together. I noted at the time that there are people that are endorsed by the Labour Council that are not members of labour unions, and there are people running in the election that are in labour unions but were not endorsed. Clearly, “membership” was not a primary selection criteria.

The other candidates and I arranged a meeting sometime in September, and discussed if there was anything we wanted to share resources on. I had already been out on the trail for about two months, and had already done a lot of the prep work, so it was an interesting discussion.

Did we want to share design services? (No, I have my own skilled volunteer). Do we want to share pamphlet printing costs? (No, I already have that worked out). Do we want to share the cost of an office? (Sounds like a good idea). Do we want to pool sign printing costs? (Yes! Darn things are expensive!) Do we want to run a phone bank for Election Day? (yeah, I’ll share that cost), Do we want to hire a staff for the phone bank? (No, I have enough volunteers). Etc. etc. At no step was I pressured to buy into anything I didn’t want to buy, participation was voluntary at every step, and the discussion was between me and the other candidates, no puppet-masters pulling strings here.

Of course, the endorsement meant that labour unions were more likely to provide funds to my campaign. As a proud member of CUPE, I primarily had access to CUPE funding, and up to now, that is the only union that has cut me a cheque. Fundraising is not completely over, but I estimate somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of my funding will come from Labour, the rest from individual donations. Did that money help? Absolutely. Was it essential to my running a strong campaign? Probably not. Besides, non-endorsed candidates had received money from labour in previous elections.

The third leg of the “Labour Slate” bogeyman is that somehow my independence as a Councillor is sacrificed by that endorsement. I can unequivocally say no member of the Labour Council has ever told me what to say on this campaign, nor have they told me how I will be expected to vote at the Council table. If anyone thinks Chuck Puchmayr,  Bill Harper and I are going to agree on everything at the Council Table because of our shared endorsement, they don’t know any of us very well. We all have our own ideas, and our own passions about the City, and I look forward to debating with them. Further, I have a five year legacy of writing my opinions, my ideas, and my vision for this City, long before I sought or received endorsement, and I stand by that record.

As for the fear that “Labour dominated” councils are monolithic and all powerful, pushing taxes up while writing sweet union deals? The evidence just doesn’t reflect that. Here is a table that shows the total Municipal tax paid per resident in the 17 Municipalities in the Lower Mainland, according to those radical lefties at the Fraser Institute. The red bars represent Municipalities where a majority of City Council was endorsed by their District Labour Council last election. I’m sorry, the correlation just isn’t there:

So instead of tilting at the windmill of “Labour Slates”, I encourage you to go to this page, and see what your neighbours in New Westminster are saying about my candidacy. I have always challenged people in this City to look past the rhetoric and the silliness, and look at the facts. I plan to bring that fact-based straight-forward approach to City Council. That is who I am, and that is why I have received endorsements from many people across New Westminster. I am proud that the Labour Council thinks I am a candidate worthy of endorsement, and I am proud of the other endorsements I have received from people I respect in the City’s volunteer, public service, and business communities.

I’m surprised this is the story: that some portion of the 21 independent candidates running for council received endorsement from the New Westminster District Labour Council, like they have in every City in the Lower Mainland for decades. I’m surprised that for some reason this requires three stories and an Editorial in the same edition of a newspaper, all with rather sideways assertions of something untoward, from being unfair to undermining democracy, complete with a nefarious-sounding expression: “the Machine”. Everyone should, apparently, fear “the Machine”.

For a subject that is allegedly “front and centre in the community”, it has hardly been raised at the 1,500+ doors I have knocked on since August. Instead, people want to talk about the Pattullo Bridge and truck traffic; condo development, high rises, and attracting businesses to New Westminster; taxes, spending, and wages; community amenities like Canada Games Pool; and when we will see that high school. You know, actual issues facing our community.

However, as a candidate, it isn’t enough to say “that doesn’t matter”. It is my job to share my view of the issue with you. This is going to take two blog posts, because there is so much wrong in what is being inferred around the NWDLC endorsement. I am first going to talk about my campaign.

Disclosure: Is my campaign backed by a “Machine”? Absolutely! Let me describe this Machine to you:

I have an amazing Campaign Manager (not a member of a labour union, not a member of any political party), who understands how to get my name out, has a keen sense for the mood of the City, knows a lot of people in the City, and has earned (through decades of community service) the respect of the community. She has provided unbelievably good guidance, advice, and planning, and has been quick to call me out when I might be headed in the wrong direction. She is brilliant, dedicated, and effective – a serious “Machine”.

I have a great Graphic Designer who has taken my pencil sketches and vague ideas and created a clean, crisp, effective look for my signs, ads, webpage and pamphlets. A stay-at-home-dad and freelancer, he is not a member of a labour union, is not a member of any political party, is volunteering at strange hours to meet various deadlines, and has an amazing eye for design. The guy is a total Machine.

 

I have a sign coordination volunteer (a Machine with a portable drill!), an ad coordinator to keep up with sometimes-frustrating newspaper standards and guidelines (another organizational Machine), a data-management person who is helping with the management of my door knocking (a real database and census Machine). All of them volunteers, one of them is a member of a labour union (I think – I actually never thought to ask), and I have no idea if any of them are members of political parties. Same goes for the guy who took my photos and edited my video, and the great people who volunteered to take part in the video. Add to that the amazingly cool couple who made me neat little buttons as conversation starters, and people who have called me up and asked for signs on their yard. 

I have been door knocking since August, and every two-hour shift I have done includes a volunteer. I have had more than a dozen volunteers stand up and volunteer to go hit doorsteps with me, every single one of them a person I respect and want to have standing beside me at the doorstep, and every one of them has wanted to stand beside me on the doorstep and tell their neighbours that they support me. I set up a Doodle poll, sent out a call for volunteers, and I’m amazed how quickly people step up to fill the roles. Machines, all.

I had a fundraiser, and had more than 100 people show up on a Sunday evening to show support to my campaign. That room was an amazing cross section of New Westminster: labour activists, environmentalists, business owners, professionals, retired people and students, and yes, there were a lot of NDP supporters, but there were also Liberals and a few true-blue Conservatives. More than a dozen small business owners in New Westminster donated door prizes to make the fundraiser more successful, and local businesses provided the food and drink. Everyone had fun, and we exceeded our fundraising goals. Thanks to a team of 10 volunteers, it ran like a finely-tuned Machine.

Speaking of fundraising, I have had almost 100 different individual people donate to my campaign. Individuals from across the community: small business operators, union workers and non-union workers, managers, scientists, students, retired people, parents.

None of them asked for a benefit for donating to my campaign, except that I do everything I can to win, and keep being the person I am. Some people gave $20, some gave a few hundreds, but the amount doesn’t matter as much as their expression of belief in what I stand for and that I can do a good job. These “cogs” allowed me to have a well-financed campaign, better than I thought I might have. This allowed me to buy signs with a little colour splash, to buy ads in the local papers, to make my pamphlets two-sided and colour: the things that make a campaign look professional. I couldn’t have done any of this without them.

None of them donated to me because I was part of a “Machine”. They donated to me because I have interacted with them over the last decade as a volunteer, a community activist, and a vocal advocate for sustainable development and our community. 

In fact, every person I listed above has donated money or provided volunteer effort to my campaign for the same reason – they know me, and they believe in me. They have seen the work I have done over the last decade in New Westminster, from organizing Community Groups like the NWEP to delegating to Council on important issues and leading conversations about important topics on-line and in print. They started reading my Blog or following me on Twitter, and liked what they read. They saw me seek out and secure grants to help raise the new roof on the Curling Club, and they saw me show up on event day and help set up tables, then show up at the end to take tables down again. They saw me across the committee table at another meeting we were both suffering through because we knew we could make a difference in the City. They know I have been busting my ass for the last decade in this City, and they want to support me. Their support is incredibly humbling, and fills me with a desire to do right by them.

Now, I am not in this campaign to run other people down. I don’t have to, because I would rather run on my positive contributions, my work ethic, my commitment, and my ideas. But a few candidates in this election who have nothing positive to talk about as far as their vision for the City wish to reduce all of what I have said here to a meme about me being supported by a mysterious and shadowy “Machine”. Frankly, I find that insulting. Not just to me and my demonstrated dedication to this City, but to all of those people I’ve described who have volunteered and contributed to my campaign because they know who I am and what I stand for. Those people, they are my Machine.

As for receiving a Labour endorsement? I’m damn proud that the Labour Council also recognized the good work I have been doing in this City, and saw me as someone they could recommend to their members as a good candidate for Council. I will discuss that more in Part 2 of this blog post, in the next few days.

 

There have been a few stories in the extant media about how this fancy new “Social Media” works, and what it means in the election. Speaking as either the local expert in social media, or the third best so far depending on which paper you read, I thought I would talk about the media, aside from the message…

I love social media, because it has been good to me. I enjoy writing, and it gives me an outlet. I love conversations and debates, and one is always available on-line. I have also met many great people through social media connections. Pretty much my entire campaign team (aside from my long-suffering partner and Financial Agent) are people I met in some way through social media, from the cool couple who make my “P@J” buttons to my exceptional graphic designer and the best darn Campaign Manager money can’t buy.  

But if there is one thing I have learned on the doorstep (and there is more than one, but let’s avoid that tangent just for now) it’s that our hyper-connected social media worlds can give us a false sense of connection to our physical neighbours. Many people I meet on the doorstep have never heard of @NWimby, never mind the blog I have spent 5 years stuffing with words. To get those people connected, even in this on-line age, requires traditional media. You need to buy ads in the local newspapers (which is why we candidates sometimes beg for money), and you need to do the oldest form of advertizing ever: hanging out the shingle. 

 

The shingle we hang out today is made of Coroplast (corrugated plastic), and we don’t just stick it in front of our own homes, but hope others will hang it in front of theirs, to get the name out into the wild. In a local election, when the TV and Radio exposure is nearly non-existent, this is still the most effective way to get your name out. Of course, I put my website URL on there, hoping to send folks to my website and other social media so they can find out who I am, but the Coroplast still rules. 

So if you “like” me on Facebook, if you “follow” me on Twitter, if you read and enjoyed a “NWimby.blogspot.ca” blog post, then please spread the word, not just through the social media, but by contacting me at info@patrickjohnstone.ca or calling me at 778-791-1002, so I can hang a shingle in your yard and spread the good news.

Thanks!   

Last weekend, we held the big event of the Campaign, a “FUNdraiser” at the Royal City Curling Club. We had a few expert coaches come out and show people enough basics of the game that they could have a fun two- or three-end game, and judging by the laughter and smiles, everyone has a great time trying out the Roarin’ Game. We then had dinner, prepared by Michael and Lindsay at Re-Up BBQ, and Jorden from Steel & Oak Brewing tapped a special cask of Raspberry Roggen-Weizen. I made a speech, people pretty much laughed at all the right times, all went well!

You can see the many photos here.

I tried to thank everyone personally: the attendees, the volunteers who helped with the organization, the people who donated to help with the campaign, and the many local businesses who donated doorprizes. If I missed thanking you personally, we will surely catch up in huge coming weeks!

What was special for me looking around that room was seeing the broad support from across the community. There were leaders from the business community, the labour community, and the arts community. There were people voting in New Westminster for the first time, and 4^th Generation New Westies. I was honoured to feel the support of that room, and was energized for the race ahead over the next 5 weeks.

The audience also got to see Version 1.1 of the Campaign Video – where people around the City talk about their reasons for supporting my Campaign:

Many thanks the Daniel Fortin for film and edit work, and to the many people who took a few minutes out of their busy lives to talk about what they want in a City Councillor. 

With only 6 weeks to go, the Campaign is now switching into a higher gear. Our Fundraiser was very successful, both in the sense of raising funds and creating excitement about the race ahead, and I will blog in a little more detail about that in coming days. My paperwork is filed at City Hall, and the field is starting to flesh out – we now know what kind of a race we will be running…

The first phase of doorknocking is over, and phase two begins this week. More importantly, the Candidates are going to start rolling out platforms for your review. I have developed a bunch of policy notes, drawn from my personal experiences, consultation with knowledgeable people from across the City, and two months of knocking on people’s doors.

If you click the “issues” tab, you will see the issues, large and small, I will be talking about during this election. These notes will continue to be added to this website with increasing detail as the campaign rolls on. In the meantime, if you have a specific question or concern, please drop me an e-mail, and I would love to have a conversation about your ideas.

Thanks!

Here is a long-delayed update on campaign progress. It has been an incredibly busy last month, and the results of all that work will soon become apparent, as the campaign season is entering full swing. It hasn’t all been eating Salmon Chowder…

 

Last week was interesting for several reasons:

Other candidates have finally started to pop up. Although none of the announcements so far have been surprising, it is good to know we will have a diverse crowd of interested people ready to share their vision of the community and contribute to the conversation. For myself, I picked up my package from City Hall and am filling in the paperwork!

Last weekend I knocked on my 1,000th door of the campaign. I have had doorstep conversations in every neighbourhood of the City, from Hume Park to Queensborough, and have learned a lot about how different issues are viewed by the vibrant mix of people we have in New Westminster. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and even the people who I may disagree with on some policy ideas seem to be happy that someone is willing to engage.

Also, last week was the first chance for multiple candidates to sit down and answer questions for a group of voters. The Massey Victory Heights Residents Association invited the declared candidates to their monthly meeting to have a “living room chat” about issues in the City. Even a few people from Quayside and Downtown managed to show up. The discussion was wide-ranging (common topics: the High School replacement project, traffic, City Hall responsiveness, the Anvil Centre, and how to engage voters better), but the conversation was civil and the ideas were flowing. It was a very positive experience.

This week’s efforts are in putting together a few interesting campaign materials, and finalizing the plans for Sunday’s fundraiser (have I mentioned my FUNdraiser yet? It will be fun, and you really should buy tickets, because there is a good chance we will sell out before Saturday), and working on the next phase of door-knocking and webpage updates. Now that the campaign has started in earnest, expect more of the materials I have been working on with my Campaign Team to arrive here. The campaign platform will be outlined piece by piece with increasing detail on this page, as I find time to write and make comprehensible the amalgamation of what I know, what I am hearing, and what I could see working in New Westminster.

In the meantime, a big thank you to all the volunteers who have helped so far, and for the much larger number who have offered to help, but who I haven’t put to work yet. I will be in touch soon.

For everyone else: I’ll see you out there on the doorstep!

The Campaign Team is happy to announce that enough details are now worked out that we can announce the FUNdriaser!

Go to this page to read about, get excited, and sign up.

It will be a fun evening that combines three things I love the most about New Westminster: curling at the Royal City Curling Club (the best curling club in BC – but I might be biased); food and drinks from great local small businesses that believe in building their community; and a large group of engaged people talking local issues and getting involved in making democracy happen. There will be a few extra fun surprises, with details to follow, but ticket numbers are limited, so sign up soon…

Since we are talking about fundraising, this is a good time to talk about why I need to raise funds.

Running a legitimate campaign for City Council costs money. I know many who are reading this know me, support me, see me everywhere, and wonder why I need to spend money advertising. However (believe it or not), being a fully engaged member of the community puts you in the minority. There are a lot of people who just aren’t as engaged, and won’t be paying attention to who is moving the conversation forward in New Westminster until the election hype starts to ramp up.

The election period is about reaching those voters: people who care about the City, the direction it takes, and who represents them on Council, but haven’t spent the three years since the last election thinking about the next one like you have. Reaching them is why I have spent August knocking on doors, why I am still knocking on doors every spare moment I have in September, and why I will be knocking on doors until November 14^th. This face-to-face connection costs little except time and volunteer effort. For everything else, we fundraise.

Lawn signs are shockingly expensive to someone who has never run before. The paper leaflets with my contact info that I leave with people at doorsteps cost more per item than you might think, and I am already through a couple of thousand of them. Advertising in the local media will be a significant cost coming up in the next few months. Website hosting, e-mail services, communications costs, printing and stationary costs to manage my neighbourhood planning and doorknocking data: these all add up. I have a great army of volunteers willing to help out, but for some things you just need to hire professional services. This list goes on.

Every time my campaign team comes up with a great idea, my exceptional Financial Agent is there to ask: where is this in the budget? The better the budget, the better the ideas we can fit in it, the better I can get my face and my name and my ideas in front of people who may not have otherwise engaged.

Everything we receive as a donation must be declared after the election. Elections BC rules do not permit donations of any amount from a business or organization to be anonymous, and individuals can only provide anonymous donations under $50. And no, you cannot dodge that rule and donate $49 to me twice, hoping to remain anonymous. Any donation of any amount must have a name attached, but it is only those that add up to more than $50 per individual that I must declare on the official forms. There is no upper limit to the amount you can donate. Note, there is some nuance and a lot of little details in the rules that I am omitting here for space. If you have questions or concerns about this process, please contact me or my Financial Agent at 778-791-1002. She is super friendly and damn smart.

So please, if you can attend the FUNdraiser October 5^th, do so. It will be fun, and the portion of your ticket price above costs will fund the Campaign. However, if you really want to help out, you can go to my Donate Page and send a donation through PayPal, or you can bring your chequebook to the FUNdraiser and contribute there, or you can mail a donation to 708 Third Ave., New Westminster V3M 1N7. Or you can stop me on the street and hand me a cheque.

Meanwhile, I am going to keep wearing out my shoes doorknocking. 

This has been an epic summer. So many good things took place in New Westminster, and there is a lot to look forward to in the coming months. 

When we look back at 2014, we might remember it as the summer that Street Festivals really took off. 

Sapperton Day is always a great one-day fest, two Uptown events and a real growth in the excitement around the 12th Street festival, our existing events are getting stronger. But it was Columbia Street in Downtown that went crazy. Show & Shine is always epic, but the Pride Street Fair and Columbia StrEAT Food Truck event showed that our appetite for closing streets in the summer is hardly slaked. There were people at last week’s events wondering why we don’t close streets more often.

My first comment was that the streets were anything but “closed”. Tens of thousands of people arrived to talk, walk, eat, listen to music, shop, and share tables in a place where there would normally be cars trundling along. Calling that a “street closure” reinforces the conceit that our public spaces are best used for moving cars through. I like the idea of calling these events “Street Openings”.

My second comment was that yes, the City can probably hold more of these, every second Saturday from Canada Day to Labour Day might be possible. However, these are not City-run events. These are events put together by teams of volunteers with help from not-for-profits like the Downtown BIA and Pride. They don’t just happen, they take planning, execution, a whole lot of energy, and the assistance of sponsors. The City assists with grants, Bylaw exemptions, and donations of services, but they don’t organize the event. If we want more of these, people are going to have to step up and organize them. The good news is that recent success will make it much more likely that the City will say “yes” when another event is proposed and comes with a solid proposal.

 

Tired volunteer at the end of the Pride Street Opening. We moved a lot of tables that day.

Other than volunteering at and/or attending Street Openings, I have been knocking on more doors. Someone has to write a book one day: Adventures in Door-knocking. There is such an interesting mix of ideas and opinions you encounter in any 4-block radius. Any notion you may bring about how one specific area votes, or what the consensus opinion is in another are soon dashed when you start chatting with people on the doorstep.

This is why it is such a valuable experience for someone like me, who is running for Council for the first time. As pointed out by a supporter this week on Facebook and discussed on Twitter – neither of these social media replace face-to-face conversations. As a non-incumbent, there are a lot of connections I have yet to make in the community before I have anything resembling “name recognition”. So back to the door-step I go.

The best part? Door-knocking is actually fun. It is full of unexpected moments, it is a constant learning experience, and people are, for the most part, genuinely happy to have a conversation about the neighbourhood.

See you out there on the streets!     

I wish I had more interesting news than this, but all I have to report is that setting up a campaign is full of little tasks that need to be done, and we are busy doing them. To give you an idea of what is involved, here is a quick summary of our last couple of weeks. 

Our early supply of doorhanger-style leaflets is pretty much depleted. The thought was to have a set of doorhangers printed up, hoping to have a few people distribute them the weekend of the launch. That way we might get some more info on people’s doorknobs the weekend that my face was on the cover of the newspaper (presuming, of course, that my face got in the newspaper). I got a better response than expected from people wanting to help out right off the bat, and we ended up running out before we could get then to all the volunteers! A second round will be returning from the printers very soon, designed more for handing out during door-knocking than hanging on doors. 

“Door-knocking” is literally what it says. A volunteer and I select a neighbourhood, and head out for about 2 hours to knock on doors and talk to people. It is actually a lot of fun if you are a “people person”. The goal is to meet people, let them know there is an election coming, and that I am their best candidate! The other goal is to find out what their biggest issues or concerns actually are. Though the vote is only 3 months away, the election is hardly on the front of most people’s minds, so it sometimes takes a bit to draw out their ideas – but it wouldn’t be New Westminster if people didn’t want to bend your ear about all that is going right and all that is going wrong about the City.

Aside from door-knocking and attending any event where people are talking about City issues, there are endless other tasks. One is data-gathering, which means making sure we have names and contact info for the people who have already volunteered to help or have donated, so we can be sure to acknowledge them and make plans. It also means creating a geographic database of helpers and neighbourhoods, so we know what ground we have covered while door-knocking and leafleting, and what we have not. Concurrently, we are trying to line up volunteers with things they might actually like to do, and setting up schedules that work for people. We are designing upgrades to this website to improve the interactivity, and are doing some message and advertizing plans. There is a lot that has to be put in place right now so it is ready for the true campaign period – which should start about mid September.  

So if you are like the majority of people whose doorstep I have not hit yet, and if you are coming here looking for updates, recognize that an apparent lack of activity belies furious activity in the background, putting things in place. And if you think you might want to spend part of an evening doorknocking with me, you might want to help organize our upcoming fundraisers, or you would like to help with datagathering, phoning people, website stuff, organizing neighbourhood teams, or any other task, please hit that “volunteer” button over there to the right, and give us your contact. We will get back to you when we are ready to put your skills to work.

Or write me an e-mail at info@patrickjohnstone.ca and we can chat about a way you might be able to help. 

A campaign is like a community – many hands make light work.  

Walking through Queens Park a little better than a week ago, I ran into the Fashionista Booth, and sat down with JJ Lee to talk about dressing for the campaign trail. You can listen to the show now and hear how it went: 

You can stream the entire program here.

Although you might want to scroll ahead to 13:45 to hear my part, you shouldn’t – this is a great show and JJ talks to a couple of your other neighbours. It is worth a listen, as are the other episodes of his special summer show.

And just so you know, JJ, the consummate gentleman, gave me lots more advice than “all natural fibres”, but he did it off-microphone to save me from the embarrassment of my existing fashion failures! If I look better on your doorstep this week, it is because I followed his advice. If not, it is because I haven’t had time to shop yet.