The most daunting marathon in the New Year is the long-running campaigns for mayors and other municipal candidates in Ontario cities. Technically, your campaign cannot start before registration, which opened January 2. It ends on election day, October 27. There are those such as Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford who are always campaigning anyway and registered early. Others can register as late as September and still be there to lose in October. It is just a question of strategy.
(And, an aside for political neophytes, do not get your strategy mixed up with tactics. Tactics are what you use to carry out your strategy. Let us just talk strategy here as tactics in politics are endless.)
It is extremely important to remember that you cannot accept or spend any campaign money until you have registered to be a candidate. And if you really do not know how anybody would find out or care, what do you think your opponents are watching for?
Both winners and losers are among the early birds in registering. There are the candidates who think they can scare off opposition by marking their turf early. There is also the relatively unknown candidate who only has until October to become a household word. Every day that you waste between now and election day is a day you cannot get back. Holidays are for losers.
And January, February and March are not months to be wasted. This is the time you will be organizing and training the troops who are going to assist you. Official agents, fund raisers, campaign managers and foot soldiers are to be recruited, your finance team has to be in place and working, your ground game has to be planned and scheduled, literature has to be developed and distribution decided, signs and social networks have to be designed and art work prepared, coffee parties and speaking venues have to be in the works and there is critical effort on headquarters and major sign locations.
And if you are not known, you have to get out there, make noise and get known. There are thousands of tactics for that.
By April, you need to be having a relationship with your voters. The next seven months is the time to meet and greet and listen to them. They will remember better what they told you than you told them. It hardly pays you to be flapping your mouth at them when they are very likely to tell you why they should elect you. That is what you need to play back to them in the final two months.
That is the real election in September and October. Now you are going to have signs and serious literature and all candidate meetings. And if you are running for mayor, you have to be meeting your voters from when the plant gates open in the morning until homeowners complain about you waking them up at night. Nobody can promise you it will be easy.
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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