NDP to use boot camp to ready for campaign

‘Intensive’ training seminar hints party set to trigger spring election

In the clearest indication yet the New Democrats are set to trigger a spring election, the party is holding two days of “intensive” campaign-readiness training next week in Toronto, the Star has learned.

While NDP Leader Andrea Horwath sidesteps most questions on whether she will topple Premier Kathleen Wynne’s minority Liberals, her party is busy behind the scenes plotting strategy in the event the May 1 budget is not passed.

A party source told the Star the New Democrats are running two days of intensive campaign training for potential volunteers in Toronto.

“We need to be ready,” the NDP source said, adding that some of the political manoeuvring that proved successful in U.S. President Barack Obama’s two campaigns will figure prominently if and when the provincial election happens.

“The content of training is increasingly oriented toward a heavy focus on having volunteers tell their personal stories — the things in their lives that motivated them to become engaged.”

This approach is largely associated with Marshall Ganz, a senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, whose theories of political organizing were central to the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012.

“It won’t be a surprise to learn that the model for 2014 is heavily influenced by lessons from the U.S. presidential cycle of 2012. New Democratic operatives spent a fair bit of time observing or briefing with Democrats about their successes.”

Finance Minister Charles Sousa’s May 1 budget could launch the province toward a June 26 election.

That’s because the budget must be debated for at least eight hours over 12 sessional days. The legislature does not sit Fridays, so 12 sessional days is the equivalent of three work weeks. But because of the Victoria Day break, MPPs do not sit for the third week in May.

So the budget vote may not happen in the legislature until May 29, setting the stage for a June 26 provincial election.

Horwath said that for the past two years her party has been working to “stimulate activism” at the riding association level.

“Much of the activism comes with the nomination process. People start thinking about elections, people start considering getting connected with the ridings to volunteer their time. But in a minority parliament we pretty much have to be doing that all the time,” she told the Star.

Horwath said the nine byelections since 2012 have maintained a buzz in the party. “We have had a lot of contested nominations this time around. We are getting a great deal of interest, We have a lot more candidates lined up already that are city councillors, school board trustees, chairs of school board, so the experience of our candidates is quite positive,” she said. Even so, Horwath has refused to show her hand publicly on whether she plans to pull the plug on the Liberals, who have been plagued with spending scandals. In the meantime, the party’s volunteers are getting their marching orders, knowing that a strong, organized ground war especially counts at a time when Ontario is suffering from low voter turnout. The party source said experience in other jurisdictions has shown that building a tightly knit network of vol- unteers with a strong commitment to winning, particularly in the early phase of campaigning, has a direct correlation with higher rates of voter contact and more effective persuasion of voters. “The party has also identified top organizers from across the country — not all of them New Democrats — who believe in Andrea and want to be part of the Ontario campaign. The common denominator seems to be that as campaign aficionados they’ve admired Andrea from a distance and/or watched the byelection wins in places that we weren’t expected to win like Kitchener-Waterloo and London West,” the source said. In September 2012 byelection, New Democrat Catherine Fife, then head of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, won the long-held Tory riding of Kitchener-Waterloo.

Then in August last year, when five byelections were held, New Democrat Percy Hatfield, a former Windsor councillor, easily stole the Liberal riding of Windsor-Tecumseh and NDP’s Peggy Sattler captured London West after former Liberal cabinet minister Chris Bentley resigned his seat in February 2013.

Most recently, Wayne Gates, a longtime unionist, won the byelection in Niagara Falls, edging out the Tories. It had been a Liberal seat until Kim Craitor resigned.

While poll results have been varied in recent weeks, a Forum Research survey published in the Star earlier this month found the Progressive Conservatives leading with 38 per cent support to 31 per cent for the Liberals, 23 per cent for the New Democrats and 7 per cent for the Green party.