We Ought To See The Wizards.

ThoseBehindTheCurtains
PullTheStringsVille


In a most excellent provincial election aftermath post, long-time Dipper Ian Reid wrote the message he thought Mr. Brian Topp, who ran Adrian Dix' campaign, should have sent to his staff (rather than the 'thanks very much' and 'we didn't do anything wrong' message Mr. Topp actually did send to them:

...‘Many of you worked in the centre of the 2009 campaign and in the space of four weeks took us from 13 points back to 3 points down, with momentum. You did that with half the staff and a quarter of the money we had this time.

‘Last time you helped run a campaign that defined the Liberals.

‘This time I ran a campaign that didn’t lay a finger on the Liberals and allowed them to define us.

It also failed to inspire people to vote for us.

‘Because of that the Liberals took a 20 point deficit and turned it into an election day rout.

‘You’re still as good as you were in 2009.

‘The difference was the leader and me. Our strategy was a disaster. It was experimental and founded on naive and delusional fantasies about politics. We let you down. Just as we let the party down and the province down.

‘For that I apologize and promise I will never darken your door again...


Interestingly, this led Mr. Topp himself to respond with the following in the very large comment thread attached to Ian's post:

"Ian this is an ill-tempered post. I was thanking our incredibly hard-working campaign team, and telling them the truth, which is that this result did not happen because of anything wrong with their work or their effort. Clearly we made some grave strategic mistakes. I take my full measure of responsibility for them. I’ll write about this, once our leader has spoken publicly about the campaign. I’m not sure how much we’ll learn from bitter score-settling...."

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Well....

Now Sean Holman has stepped back a little and has weighed in on the matter of what we, the lowly peons who are not party insiders, know or, more importantly perhaps, don't know about the 'Campaign Wizards' like Mr. Topp et al. who do their darndest to mess with our voting preferences:

...In past elections, British Columbia's major newspapers published "who's who in the zoo" profiles of political campaign backrooms.

That kind of coverage is considered by some editors and reporters to be too inside baseball -- stories only of interest to political players.

It's also difficult for journalists to write those profiles since political parties aren't required to disclose who their campaign staffers and advisors are.

That -- and newsroom downsizing -- perhaps explains why there were so few "who's who in the zoo" profiles during the 2013 election.

The closest thing resembling such a profile was a March 18 article published by a national newspaper -- the Globe and Mail.

The article, authored by reporter Justine Hunter, listed some political animals who would be on the campaign trail - focusing on the members of public affairs consulting agency Kool Topp and Guy (Premier Christy Clark's former chief of staff Ken Bossenkool, Brian Topp and former Ontario Liberal Party campaign director Don Guy).

But because the public didn't have more comprehensive coverage of such insiders, we don't know how much influence other personalities such as party president Moe Sihota and party secretary Jan O'Brien had on the election result.

We know Topp -- who was national campaign director for the NDP during the 2006 and 2008 federal elections -- was the BC NDP's campaign manager.

But we don't know what the specific roles and decisions his colleagues Anne McGrath and Brad Lavigne played and made during the 2013 provincial election.

The same could be said for fellow insiders Marcella Munro and Jim Rutkowski.

Nor do we know who else was in the war room and how their backgrounds may have influenced the BC NDP's campaign choices.

As a result of this low or non-existent profile, I believe it becomes easier for politicos such as Topp to claim the election's "heartbreaking result had nothing to do with the work of our campaign team."

{snippety doo-dah}

...The lack of "who's who in the zoo" pieces also means we don't have an understanding of everyone who deserves credit for -- and could benefit from -- the BC Liberal Party's election victory.

Big parts of the political history of British Columbia are literally being lost because they aren't being written.

And that will make it difficult for both the public and press to hold the opposition and the government to account in the future -- no ifs, ands or buts.

I could not agree with Sean more.

And there is also matter that in the aftermath of these War of Wizards it is the victors who receive the spoils.

Government spoils, I mean. (see, for example, this).

OK?



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And while I am most happy to read Mr. Holman's stuff again, it really does pain me to see the last of the independents write, presumably gratis, for Ariana's former cash cow and nipple-slip emporium....Why?...Because there's is a business model where those that actually create the real content get screwed over, big-time...
Sean's personal blog is....here.


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