Anatomy of a failed political campaign
Detailing one man’s experience during a Canadian election
There is no escaping the manic American election season this year. And it’s been just about one year since Canada was in the throes of its own election, one that resulted in a win for Justin Trudeau’s “sunny ways.”
While the U.S. presidential election process appears to be simple — you vote for your candidate directly but through the auspices of the Electoral College system, Canadians choose a prime minister through whichever party wins the most ridings.
That means the campaign to be a member of Parliament is crucially tied to a leader’s successes and failures.
It’s this process that journalist Noah Richler experiences as he writes about his failed attempt to win a seat in The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.
Part memoir, part instructional manual, the book details one man’s experience during the election that resulted in the collapse of the NDP as the official opposition under its leader, Thomas Mulcair.
Fed up with the Stephen Harper Conservative government, Richler ( This is My Country, What’s Yours: A Literary Atlas of Canada) decides to enter politics. Believing the Liberals are too smug (he is wary of Trudeau’s “brand”), he approaches the NDP (even though he is not a card-carrying member) only to be asked the critical question: Would he “run to lose?”
The answer is yes and Richler runs as the NDP candidate in the central Toronto riding of Toronto—St. Paul’s, where he must learn on the job everything it takes to run a campaign while facing the18-year incumbent, Liberal Carolyn Bennett.
Richler takes readers through a humourous look at the ins and outs of a political campaign by combining his reminiscences with Facebook posts, Twitter conversations, a Shakespearean parody, daydreams, op-eds and even commentaries from volunteers.
The pace is exhausting: From finding a staff to hosting fundraising pub nights, all-candidate debates without a Conservative representative, jockeying for position with fellow NDPers at Mulcair rallies and sad visits to old-age homes.
Richler comes to mostly enjoy door-todoor canvassing and to accept the oddities of the campaign trail — receiving a donation from a Conservative who wants a sign to tick off his Facebook friends or attending a Forest Hill meet-and-greet where no one turns up.
If Bennett is his local nemesis (he is irked by her statement that “every four years I have to reapply for my job”), NDP headquarters becomes his national one. Elections are about leaders and Richler bristles against Mulcair’s announcements, from a Conservative-style plan for a balanced budget to a lacklustre statement on the intake of Syrian refugees. Old Facebook posts get Richler the wrong kind of media attention, but it’s a feud with the CBC over a satiric campaign video starring Peter Mansbridge that really aggravates the national campaign field director.
It is difficult for Richler to accept that his ideas for the party are not being heard; that he is merely one out of 339 candidates and, in the party’s eyes, an unimportant one at that.
Despite the earnest attempt to win his seat, it becomes evident Richler is losing the race as more and more doors are shut in his face.
By the end of the campaign with the NDP trailing badly, petulance and bitterness begins to seep through.
He calls the party a “calamitous failing state . . . long ago having reneged on any way of being bold.”
While Richler skewers the NDP, he does miss a few opportunities to see his own privilege.
He admits that he is “just another white guy,” one who just happens to be able to draw NDP royalty into the fold (Stephen Lewis becomes a “patron,” while Lewis’ sister Janet Solberg joins the campaign team).
Yet Richler can’t help but disparage the owners of widescreen TVs; and he astonishingly and unselfconsciously takes the Caribbean-Canadian woman who cleans his house weekly on a canvas through Little Jamaica.
The book’s title refers to Hunter S. Thompson’s classic coverage of an American election for Rolling Stone magazine, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.”
Richler’s antics are mostly mild-mannered — unless creating a viral YouTube video of Trudeau stuck on an escalator or cycling through Forest Hill shouting socialist messages counts as Thompson’s infamous style of gonzo journalism.
His self-deprecating tone amuses although he does linger a little too much on internal campaign dramas.
Richler’s The Candidate is a fascinating look at the election process, if somewhat dispiriting in its disclosure of how it works. Piali Roy is a writer in Toronto.