We started to watch the Ontario Liberal leadership debate on the Internet from Thunder Bay the other day. It was not exciting. As luck would have it, unexpected company interrupted before we fell asleep in front of the computer.
The debate—as it was called—was not particularly enlightening anyway. What is interesting are the campaigns being waged by the various candidates. If this is a sample of the more intense campaign in January, we will have to get call display to control our telephone calls for the month.
The most aggressive campaign is being waged by former MPP Sandra Pupatello. She did a province-wide telephone town hall late the other evening. We stayed on the line as long as the wife would let us but we were unable to ask the one question that we have not heard her answer yet. It was the question about how to fix the top-down nature of political parties these days.
Kathleen Wynne is the other very aggressive candidate and we have heard her answer to the question; she is going to create a consensus. We have had a number of calls now from Wynne’s campaign. These include annoying robocalls as well as the other day a live telemarketer who wanted to know who we were supporting. The caller was a bit nonplussed when she got a lecture on the responsibility of elected electoral district representatives to represent their riding rather than a candidate. We are likely to be recorded now as a probable/undecided.
Other candidates were caught off guard in Thunder Bay by how much Glen Murray seems to know about problems faced by Canada’s aboriginal population. Anybody who knows Winnipeg knows the answer to that and Murray used to be Winnipeg mayor.
The best marketing award in this campaign seems to have already been awarded to the Eric Hoskins’ team. His team has very little to work with and even uses humour to fill the gaps. His e-mail campaign makes excellent use of third party commentary, when they can find it, and is on top of things.
Which begs the question: who is Charles Sousa and why does nobody hear from him? Or are we just lucky?
Harinder Takhar records his own robocalls. He is not getting good advice.
That leaves Gerard Kennedy who is probably keeping his powder dry until the campaign intensifies in January. Or whatever!
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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