10.27.2014 10:40 PM

Communications, job interviews, and Toronto’s mayoralty

If elections are just great big job interviews (and they are) then communications – how you communicate, when you communicate, what you communicate – ultimately determine whether you get the job or not.

There are exceptions to that, of course. (There are always exceptions in politics.)  In Toronto’s municipal campaign, there were three big things that affected the race.

• The New Democrat brand was in decline. In B.C., Nova Scotia, Ontario, New Brunswick, in federal by-elections: pretty much everywhere, these days, the NDP are struggling. That hurt Olivia Chow – the doyenne of the NDP – the most.

• Rob Ford (unexpectedly) went into rehab for two months, and then he (unexpectedly) came back. He raised hopes that Ford Nation would disappear, and then he dashed them. At that point, the election – which had always been a referendum on the Fords – became even more so. The anti-Ford coalition started looking for the candidate who could beat Ford(s), and not necessarily the best one.

• The biggest issue in Toronto is how to get around. As everyone who lives here knows too well, the city is a Hellish mess. No one with a brain believed that any one candidate had the solution – but they wanted to hear ideas about how to fix it. John Tory’s transit plan wasn’t a smart track, it was a laugh track: it promised to send heavy-rail trains on right turns through churches and homes. It had no way to pay for itself. It treated some parts of the city as more equal than others – and it reflected Tory’s core belief that white privilege doesn’t exist. But Tory at least talked about transit. The others didn’t, not nearly enough. And when they did get around to it, it was too late.

Those three big things aside, elections are – again – great big job interviews. They are all about communications.

For years, Tory was a serial loser mainly because he couldn’t communicate. Then, he got hired as a radio talk show host, and he spent four years learning how to communicate better.

He was a liar, of course. He donated thousands to the Fords, and defended them on his radio show, and then pretended he didn’t do either. He supported LRT, then reversed himself on it.  He said he had a Number One Priority that wasn’t. But John Tory was after redemption, and he figured he could easily beat the overweight crack addict and the Chinese socialist.

Doug Ford was – for Etobicoke and Scarborough, the boroughs where Ford Nation remains strong – the perfect candidate. He was the tough fiscal conservative, without the crack. He was bigger than life.  He was a maverick, and Toronto likes maverick mayors. But he came into the race too late. He would have won if he’d been Ford Nation’s candidate a lot sooner – because he is a much better communicator than John Tory.

He’s also a better communicator than Olivia Chow. But, really, who isn’t?

Our last memory of her, before she ran, was the stoic, dignified, quiet widow, standing beside Jack Layton’s casket. Then she disappeared into the maw of Ottawa, and nobody really saw her again until she ran for mayor.

She was the frontrunner, at the start, because voters thought she was still the woman they remembered from Jack’s funeral. But she wasn’t.  She’d changed.

She was, instead, an unremarkable person who couldn’t communicate her way out of a wet paper bag. She was hard to understand. She was dominated, easily, but the slick former radio host and the talking points machine.

She didn’t speak English at home, and that is what hurt her the most, in the end: in debates, in scrums, she always sounded like she was translating something from Chinese into English. It was fatal, in fact.

In a real election campaign, advertising can help a candidate overcome their inability to communicate well. But the Toronto mayoralty wasn’t a real campaign: it’s an unmitigated joke, with 60 debates, millions of voters, a province-sized area to cover – and only $1.5 million to do it all.

It can’t be done. You can’t effectively advertise, over that much time, with that many voters, with that ridiculously-small budget. Can’t be done.

So, you need to rely on the news media to cover those interminable debates, and show clips of you looking and sounding like a mayor. Olivia Chow, however, never looked or sounded like a mayor. She looked like what she was: an unremarkable person who struggled to communicate. Who was consistently dominated by her two main opponents. Who didn’t have a big idea to sell, who didn’t have a clear message.

She also, as I experienced personally, wasn’t a particularly nice person. She wasn’t likeable.

When she tossed me under the proverbial bus – for doing what we had all agreed we would do, which was point out the white privilege at the heart of John Tory’s main plank – she lied. She lied about me being one volunteer out of “thousands.” She lied about meeting with me – she had met me many times, and regularly, too (even at her house!). She lied.

Reporters knew it, and some voters sensed it. She looked like a stammering, yammering deer in the headlights. And a person who doesn’t tell the truth.

I’ve written a book about the need for progressives to work together to defeat conservatives. My involvement with Chow grew out of that – coupled with my desire to rid the city of Rob Ford.

I don’t really believe in that unite-the-left stuff, anymore. Olivia Chow beat it out of me. A lot of New Democrats, I’ve come to accept, believe winning the bronze is their lot in life. They’re almost uncomfortable with the idea of winning the gold. That certainly is the case with Chow, who looks more content in third place (as she is now) than being in first place (as she was at the start).

Communications. That’s what these things are all about. Tory and Ford could, Chow couldn’t. Simple.

What will the next four years be like? Gridlock, dithering, indecision, elitism, scandal, lies.

The usual, in other words.

 

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51 Comments

  1. Greg says:

    You don’t need to separate paper from plastic and tins there?

  2. Rob Carter says:

    Given the divisiveness of the Fords, this race ultimately became an election choice between the Fords and the anti-Fords. And given the constant third of the electorate that are part of Ford Nation – Anti-Ford voters were scared that a three-way race would result in the election of another bumbling/embarrassing Ford to the office of Mayor. Olivia benefited from being the primary Anti-Ford early. But as the dynamic shifted with Rob’s departure and Doug’s entrance, John Tory became the anti-Ford. Maybe it was the vicious badgering between Tory and Doug in the first debates, but it forced Olivia on the sidelines and the race became a Tory/Doug Ford race. I think the race was defined there.

    I see your points communication, but isn’t part of the problem with the Chow campaign strategy too? Or is it simply communication and the more we got to know her…the less we liked her?

  3. doconnor says:

    Chrétien had language problems, but I guess he didn’t have so many debates.

    I like how you staged your recycling box to show off your orange juice and milk and hide your Corona box.

    • ABoucher says:

      He did an even better job on the Rolling Rock box… but the man eats Habitant pea soup, so, as a proud French Canadian, my respect for WK has just gone up a notch.

  4. Anton says:

    Legit burn.

  5. Bill MacLeod says:

    What was she thinking?

    Most rational people in the public limelight know you never argue with those who buy ink by the barrel. Did she think you would be a good soldier and just roll over for an NDP candidate?

    I’m pleased to see you did not.

    Regards,

    Bill

  6. Drew says:

    Just out of curiosity, with all these flavors to choose from, why did you choose salty sour grape?

    Regards,

    Drew

  7. Chretien had a language problem but he overcame it because he was an “everyman” or as Warren puts it, he had HOAG. If he were to run again tomorrow he’d win in a heartbeat. Anyone who can describe Canada’s unity challenges by invoking the image of pushing a car out of a snow-filled ditch by rocking it back and forth, speaks a language that most people can wrap their heads around. It makes him/her “one of us”.

  8. Steve T says:

    Here’s a more general observation: very few successful politicians are nice people, anymore. Many of them started off as nice people, but the nature of politics turns most of them into a-holes, liars, and opportunists. It’s sad, but seems to be fairly universal.

    • jeff316 says:

      Politics is a tough business to be in. The majority get into it for the “right reasons” only to quickly realize that what drove them was an inaccurate, unachievable or simply unimportant policy nugget that is lost in the grand scheme of a government’s priorities.

      It is easy to get seduced by the allure of running for office but you’ll notice that the vast majority of losing candidates never take another crack. And when you do get elected, work is very different from the campaign trail. I mean, who hasn’t been tapped on the shoulder at work and taken a leap, only to realize that you were driven in part by the ego-boost of being courted and that you kinda liked your old job?

      There is a very significant divergence between what the public sees politicians do and what politicians truly do. This leads many into a high-profile, high-stress profession they are ill-suited for or do not enjoy. It’s a profession of constant conflict. Of constant confrontation. Of constant public disappointment. It can kill your personal life, your public life, and your family life.

      People become dependent on you – your party, colleagues, staff, riding association, supporters. Your family gets used to the money, which offsets your absence from your partner, family, the unflattering articles in the local paper, and the flack you take at the mall, the hard time your kids may get at school.

      It becomes hard to get out of with your personal, familial, professional and political life intact. Talk to a lot of MPs or MPPs that have lost an election, as they fall into two camps – some find freedom, many others never recover.

      I suspect Olivia’s mistake was to be convinced – either by others or by more likely by her own ego – to run for something that she probably didn’t truly want and, in my opinion, could never win.

      Having worked at two legislatures, I’ve met a lot of politicians that I haven’t liked. But I won’t say they’re not nice or bad people because if I were in their job, I would be too.

  9. Ted Heighington says:

    Well said. Good cathartic rant. Happen to agree with just about all. Standing still for another 4 years is about right, perhaps just with a little less media savagery…

  10. thomaus says:

    I never fully understand the push for Chow, other than her early lofty poll numbers. It didn’t make sense to take an effective MP out of the mix in Ottawa. I was eventually sold (pretty much) after seeing Olivia give speeches. Within that sort of space, she could communicate, and win over rooms. But that sort of thing was rarely displayed during the many debates.

    So, who was the communicator that should have been the unite-the-left candidate? Adam Vaughan? Rick Mercer?

  11. Tim says:

    The need to unite the left is bigger than the discontent you may feel for someone who so happens to hail from the NDP. I think you’re projecting a bad experience with one leader onto the rest of the lot. That party has enjoyed major victories in BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and on. While perhaps sitting in the opposition benches for the time being, don’t write them off, and please don’t wallow into the unnecessary partisanship that is the Liberal-NDP divide. Losers don’t legislate and under the Westminster system vote splitting is not rewarded. We don’t always get to choose our ideal candidates without creating a “wasted vote” that ultimately leads to the least favorable option.

    We’ve had over 10 years of rule by a disconnected group of tyrants because the NDP and the Liberals can’t get their effing crap together. Every time I meet one or the other and hear them bloviate about how different they are I try to remind them that it doesn’t damn matter because it’s been over a decade since they had any say. I blame the NDP and the Liberals more for screwing up the country than the Cons. If they were real tacticians, they’d have taken their differences to the same tent like the Cons did rather than letting their petty pride get in the way of things. You know what a merged NDP and Liberal party looks like? Chretien Liberals or Romanow NDPers. Socially conscious, fiscally responsible pragmatic governance. It sounds to me like the Liberals would be happy with a Trudeau minority next time around. Yeah cause that’ll last real long. Christ!

    • sezme says:

      I think uniting the left would be a mistake. Not because I’m a Dipper who hates Liberals (I don’t). But because I look at what politics has become in the USA with extreme polarity (and minimal policy difference). The Democrats and Republicans of 2014 hate each other with a passion that Canadians of any political colour could barely imagine. Having three slightly overlapping parties helps mitigate that problem. The Ford brothers give one a taste of the kind of the kind of no-compromise politics in full force south of the border.

      Of course it makes it harder for progressives to get elected, but certainly not impossible. It wasn’t until 2006 that the Liberals forgot they were supposed to be “Canada’s Natural Governing Party”.

    • Reg says:

      But both Quebec-centric centre-left party leaders are adamantly opposed to merging the Liberals and Dippers. That means both of them must step down as party leaders if Harper wins another majority or even minority government because both of them are an impediment to a merger or even a coalition. A unity leader must be found to unite the centre-left for the 2019 election. Who could that be?… Bob Rae?!

  12. A couple of things to remember:
    1. When it comes to effective communication, audiences matter just as much as the speaker. Ms. Chow was an electable MP because she spoke to a constituent base that comprised only a portion of Toronto’s population – urban, upper-middle-income, socially aware from a progressive standpoint. Her task was essentially to reach out *beyond* her natural constituency; her mistake was assuming that said constituency was bigger than it actually was, and so she chose not to do so.
    2. So long as city councillors regard their budget as a base for expansionist projects, “Ford Nation” will never go away. There will always be a significant portion of the taxpayer that insists that basic services (water, streets, waste collection, police / emergency services) be delievered to the highest standard possible, and anything else (libraries, stadia, megaprojects) is an “optional extra.” If they want to overcome that, the city’s progressives have to up their communication skills to the populace as a whole — and continually remember that their objective is to *persuade,* not *command.*

    • doconnor says:

      In this election, it was the right-wing candidates proposing transit megaprojects with dubious to non-existent plans to pay for them. Chow’s plans where all too modest.

      As an New Democrat Chow was tared with being a tax and spender, no matter how modest her plans, while Tory and Ford where seen a fiscally responsible despite throwing around very dubious multibillion dollar plans.

    • jeff316 says:

      “1. When it comes to effective communication, audiences matter just as much as the speaker. Ms. Chow was an electable MP because she spoke to a constituent base that comprised only a portion of Toronto’s population – urban, upper-middle-income, socially aware from a progressive standpoint. Her task was essentially to reach out *beyond* her natural constituency; her mistake was assuming that said constituency was bigger than it actually was, and so she chose not to do so.”

      If you drove or walked through residential neighbourhoods south of St Clair, you’d see Chow signs outnumber Tory. The problem is, the electorate is much wider than that. Olivia is an excellent local candidate, but not a good candidate for a broader, wider election.

      This is accurate. If you went to any streetfestival over the summer or fall, you’d see Olivia thronged with people. That gets you elected in Toronto-Danforth or Parkdale, but not in Scarborough, North York or Etobicoke (and not so much in Trinity Spadina anymore.)

      The question here isn’t “why did Olivia fall so hard?” but more so “why were the early polls so misleading?”

    • Just Askin' says:

      The public purse should never pay for private sector stadiums. Please visit http://www.fieldofschemes.com/ to learn why, or better yet, buy the book.

      Most megaprojects (Nathan Phillips Square, as a recent example) are a colossal waste of money due to the incompetence of public sector construction project management combined with the private sector’s knowledge that due to said mismanagement, the jobs are pure money. Add corruption to the mix, and the jobs are a goldmine.

  13. Timothy O'Malley says:

    Habitant Pea Soup.

    Respect.

  14. david says:

    thinking about the party system and how it permits people to hide under their leader’s skirt. Smitherman was hugely successful in provincial politics but looked terrible when the glare was solely on him. Chow was the same. She was good to operate within her party base, but couldn’t project success to the larger electorate. So long as you’re not the leader you can hide in party politics. You can’t for a mayor of large city.

  15. Annex Dude says:

    I’m shumlin@hotmail.com, at 99.242.199.73 in Ajax. Who can find me?

  16. nick says:

    Stop italicizing things please.

  17. Joe says:

    Maybe Olivia Chow and Danielle Smith are sisters because it seems they both blow huge leads with or without help from their aides and other hangers on.

  18. Steven says:

    If they were salespeople, their products would be:

    Tory: pricey insurance policy with lots of exclusions and restictions in the fine print.

    DoFo: “great deal” on a used Hummer with tinted windows and disintigrating muffler.

    Chow: personally autographed copy of “My Journey”.

  19. Stephanie Powers says:

    I found it a weird Bizarro election in that the working class/immigrant population stuck with the Fords for the most part, and the rich downtown elites went for Chow.

    When Rob did his drunken patois imitation, his standing went up with blacks in Toronto, not down.

    When he praised Chinese people for “working like dogs” they understood he said it as a compliment. White liberals were the ones who got offended.

    Rob bought his drugs off of Arabic and Somali dealers. He’s a diverse guy when it comes to his suppliers.

    Chow was always going to struggle methinks. And then trying to play the race card, class card, didn’t work with who the NDP’s traditional constituency was. Anyone who might have believed John Tory was a closet racist was never voting for Tory anyways, they were voting for the Fords.

    I would have held Chow out of the election until September, limit her policy announcements and find excuses for her to miss debates. Then she would have been an empty vessel into which all anti-Ford hopes and dreams are poured.

    My two cents.

    • Just Askin' says:

      Someone like John Tory could never comfortably hang out with non-rich, non-whites. If he wasn’t an entitled bubble boy, he would be chock full of white guilt. Rob Ford can hang out with anyone he wants, and he can be comfortable with anyone as long as they like him. No white guilt there because he doesn’t think along those lines in the first place.

      Rob Ford is flawed and he says stupid things when drunk, but he is real, and people respond to that. If you can’t love Rob Ford for being a flawed idealist, who are you really?

      • Just Askin' says:

        Another way to put it is that Tory’s “SmartTrack” is a stupid-idea-by-committee-engineered-to-get-votes. Ford’s “Subways, Subways, Subways” is an expression of a visceral vision that we can all rally behind. If you can imagine Toronto in 50 years with “Subways, Subways, Subways”, you can understand where Ford’s coming from.

        Tory’s SmartTrack is the same mealy-mouthed bullshit that led to the Go Train in the ’60s. As stated on Wikipedia “The idea of GO Transit was created out of fear of becoming lost in years of planning; it was ‘approached as a test, but recognized to be a permanent service.'”

  20. Steven says:

    P.S. Chow’s drawing on napkins and cartoon tv ads were cringe-inducing.

  21. Ridiculosity says:

    I originally intended to vote for Olivia.

    But then I came to the conclusion that if you can’t run a decent campaign that communicates your vision, you certainly can’t run a city of this size and complexity.

    Chow couldn’t communicate. She also couldn’t summon up the good grace (or sense) to withdraw from the race weeks ago, even though her advisors must has told her there was zero chance of her winning.

    There was no reason that Toronto had to hold its collective breath for so long hoping that Tory would be able to maintain that 20,000 vote lead.

    I can’t forgive her for that.

    If the stars had aligned differently, we could have awoken to the headline, “Ford Takes Toronto By Surprise”.

  22. Corey says:

    I agree with almost all of what you’re saying here Warren. I think there’s a second related element to communications that was in play and that is the question of leadership/competence. Voters like to look at someone and feel confident in their competence as a leader. Tory got that right this time (he didn’t in the past). Chow does not have that presence, that leadership aura. She looked more like an idealist than a pragmatist, and thus fell into the typical NDP trap: purist ideology over pragmatic leadership. (This is also by the way why Liberals have dominated Federal politics for 100 years – pragmatism/moderation)

    What it comes down to is that across Canada, we are not seeing a shift to the left so much as a shift to the middle, moderate centre. That’s where John Tory positioned himself. Chow campaigned as if Toronto was looking to go left after Ford’s turn to the right. I think Tory understood they were looking to go to a moderate, practical, competent leadership to replace Ford’s incompetence/poor leadership/inability to work with others. And so he wins.

  23. Reg says:

    Kinsella:

    “I’ve written a book about the need for progressives to work together to defeat conservatives. My involvement with Chow grew out of that – coupled with my desire to rid the city of Rob Ford.
    I don’t really believe in that unite-the-left stuff, anymore. …….”

    Warren, this is a devastating admission by you, and now that begs the question: “How does the divided centre-left defeat the Harper Conservatives in the next election?”. They don’t ??!!

    We know that both Trudeau and Mulcair are categorically opposed to any form of pre-coalition or merger, so we are going into the next election divided and defeated!

    As I see it, the only way to unite the centre-left is to decisively lose the next federal election and get rid of both Trudeau and Mulcair… and search for an acceptable unity leader, as the only way to unite through merger.

    • Kaspar Juul says:

      Ugh, Id rather go down fighting that support any party that choses to decisively lose

      • Reg says:

        Okay, I hear you but the only way the Left will unite is if the Harper Conservatives win another decisive majority government in the 2015 election thus forcing the Liberals and NDP to enter into merger negotiations. To ensure that greater good happens is to vote Conservative and then prepare for the 2019 election as a united centre-left progressive party… a New Liberal Democratic Party?

        Both Mulcair and Trudeau represent Quebec-centric parties and will not be acceptable to voters in the ROC who in 2011 elected the majority Harper government…. and please, don’t give us your narrow minded delusions about Canadians hating Harper because the silent voting majority will decide who they prefer for PM of Canada and not some silly contrived popularity polling today.

    • doconnor says:

      The solution isn’t reducing voter’s choice, but implementing democratic reforms. PR would prevent the Conservatives from winning false majorities. Under single transferable vote Chow would have done much better, she may have been able to win.

      • Reg says:

        PR will never happen federally because that would give all the power to the high density population centres like Ontario and Quebec. PR would also diminish the rural vote into insignificance. PR would be challenged in the SCoC and it would be overthrown according to the rules of our Confederation of Provinces.

        • doconnor says:

          Which section of the constitution would be used to strike down PR?

          The Green Party tried to use the constitution to strike down first past the post. I think a stronger case could be made for that.

  24. jeff316 says:

    Some of the assumptions in these comments are too simplistic.

    Why do you people assume that without Olivia in the race that those voters would have gone to Tory? Why is it her unforgivable responsibility to pull out of the race, and not the responsibility of either a) Tory (aka Liberals) to court her votes effectively by appealing to Chow-inclined voters (aka NDP), or b) the voters themselves to choose?

    Why do people assume a “united centre-left” (whatever that is) will retain all of the current NDP and Liberal votes, not losing any to a new left or to the Conservatives?

    Did anyone not see the recent Ontario provincial election, with its Conservative-NDP vote shifts and Conservative-Liberal vote shifts? Do people not understand that those on the “right” of the Liberal party and the “left” of the NDP are in those parties for a reason?

    Do people not understand that many voters vote against the Liberals or the NDP, and won’t want to vote for a combined party?

    How can the “centre-left” be a strong counterweight to a “right”?

    Uniting the “centre-left” will only ensure fewer progressive politicians, fewer progressive policies and increased Conservative majorities – see sezme’s post, see the US.

    Such simplistic thinking is never effective in the real world.

    • Reg says:

      …. and the alternative is what? A Trudeau Liberal minority government that wouldn’t last a second after they table their first Budget? Both the Cons and Dippers would vote no confidence in a Trudeau government, and they will have good reasons to kill it off… just like Layton destroyed the Martin minority government because Jack knew the Liberals must be destroyed before the NDP could ascend to government. Jack knew he had to kill the Liberal Beast for the sake of the NDP, and Harper joined him in that crusade.

      Now we have Dippers saying they would vote Liberal because they hate Harper so intensely, not thinking that a vote for the Liberals is a vote for the demise of their NDP. Such blindness, such stupidity!!!

  25. jeff316 says:

    Some of the assumptions in these comments are too simplistic.

    Why do you people assume that without Olivia in the race that those voters would have gone to Tory? Why is it her unforgivable responsibility to pull out of the race, and not the responsibility of either a) Tory (aka Liberals) to court her votes effectively by appealing to Chow-inclined voters (aka NDP), or b) the voters themselves to choose?

    Why do people assume a “united centre-left” (whatever that is) will retain all of the current NDP and Liberal votes, not losing any to a new left or to the Conservatives?

    Did anyone not see the recent Ontario provincial election, with its Conservative-NDP vote shifts and Conservative-Liberal vote shifts? Do people not remember just how many votes the Liberals lost to the Conservatives in the last federal election?

    Do people not understand that those on the “right” of the Liberal party and the “left” of the NDP are in those parties for a reason?

    Do people not understand that many voters vote against the Liberals or the NDP, and won’t want to vote for a combined party?

    How can the “centre-left” be a strong counterweight to a “right”?

    Uniting the “centre-left” will only ensure fewer progressive politicians, fewer progressive policies and increased Conservative majorities – see sezme’s post, see the US.

    This is the real world, not SimCity politics.

  26. Dana Larsen says:

    I’m a single issue loser. I’m irrelevant.

  27. Ryan says:

    I’ve been a huge critic of you Warren along with a lot of so called ” progressives ”

    I’m a liberal minded person – I would vote democrat if I was American .
    Unfortuniy I haven’t voted for any progressive candidate in years. I can’t support fake people who are annoying critics at best – just because someone leans left doesn’t mean they should run.

    A breadstick has more charisma and personality then most progressive candidates … And everyone would support them.

    Chow supporters make so many excuses when clearly she was the problem – she knew how to speak years ago as a councilour – she riled people up against Lastman etc.

    Anyways I hope u inspire more progressives to look in the mirror and seriously evaluate who they support – support for progressives will be unstoppable if that happens

  28. socks clinton says:

    You didn’t crush the cans, boxes or bottles. No wonder your recycling bin is overflowing. And if you’re so progressive where are the empty Corona beer bottles for the vagrants to collect and cash in at the Beer Store.

  29. zoe says:

    Sir,I’ve just lost all respect for you.I’d say more but I’m not fluent in ‘dumbass” like you so obviously are.

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