NDP Leadership 19

AnonymousMouse wrote:

I don't discount neighbour to neighbour organizing techniques for selling memberships, but as you point out that is more organizationally intensive and the ridings in Quebec lack organization. On the other hand, fewer volunteers could do a lot with a centralized pool of leads, but these voter contact generated leads are much rarer in Quebec than in the rest of the country. The candidates will have more volunteers, but they will also be more centralized (not necessarily in every riding, or just one per riding) and won't have access to pretty much any leads. The party can pull together resources--including leads--from a variety different sources and match that with organizing capacity that will be more effective than any other effort operating by itself.

I didnt say 'neighbour to neibour' is more organizationaly intensive, and I dont think it is. [I think that bland work 'network' is more relevant to how it unflods.] I think the conventionla means of high growth from voter contact lists is easier. But it is not a different kind or depth of organization.

And I dont think the party has any organizational advantages. What I said is that they have natural disadvantages, which I think in this particular case may be minimal to non-existant.

So if you want agreement, you wont get it with 'the party is best positioned'. I will agree that the party can help, and maybe there are reasons it should.

Now that I have had a chance to think through the practicalities involved, I will name the (big) elephant in the room.

Contrary to peoples fears that laissez faire on membership will lead to minimal Quebec memberships, the Topp campaign can be counted on to sign up LOTS of members in Quebec.

Because that is where the potential numbers for new members are. And while Mulcair goes into this with the name recognition, signing up members is about organization. And guess who has the lead there. A very big one.

So Brian Topp will sign up lots of Quebec members without help.

And Tom Mulcair will be the primary benificiary- because of name recognition- of neutral member sign-ups.

So while there are high minded reasons for the party doing the most to expand Quebec membership, this is anything but a question without big campaign interests.

Oh, one other thought KenS. To expand on your discussion of "hooks", I think a non-candidate specific sales pitch along these lines could be very effective:

"With the Great Orange Wave in Quebec, we need more Quebeckers to become members of the NDP to help choose our new leader. That's why we're calling you as part of our spexcial project to recruit more NDP members in Quebec. Memberships are currently half the price in Quebec as the rest of Canada--just $5 or $10. If we don't sign up as many members as we can right now it will diminsh Quebec's voice in choosing the next NDP Leader."

That's just off the top of my head, but I think there's a lot in there you could use to build an effective pitch. This sort of thing would spark Quebeckers interest.

KenS wrote:

...Brian Topp will sign up lots of Quebec members without help.

And Tom Mulcair will be the primary benificiary- because of name recognition- of neutral member sign-ups.

So while there are high minded reasons for the party doing the most to expand Quebec membership, this is anything but a question without big campaign interests.

 

This assumes Topp will have enough support in Quebec to find a lot of people who he'd want to sign up in the first place. What leads you to believe he will have that level of support? I don't know how much support he'll have in Quebec, but it wouldn't surprise me if he were out numbered 10 or 20 to 1.

Regardless of that point, I agree Mulcair (and Saganash) would be the primary beneficiary of any neutral membership sign up in Quebec (I think Mulcair and Saganash will be the primary beneficiaries of both neutral and non-neutral membership sign ups in Quebec), but likewise I thimk candidates from outside Quebec would equally be the primary beneficiaries of NOT having a party membership drive in Quebec. If we assume it will be Topp and Mulcair on the final ballot, that would be mean a membership drive favours Mulcair and no membership drive favours Topp. But inaction is still a choice. It's a choice either way.

I think the ultimate question is "Ignoring leadership campaign interests, would the party be well advised to launch the kind of membership operation in Quebec that already exists in other provinces now while people are interested in becoming members, or would it make sense to wait until later?"

If it were some other event, not a leadership race, that were generating this much interest in Quebec for becoming a member of the NDP, the federal party, knowing we need to massively build our organizational capacity there over the next four years, would be jumping at the opportunity. The belief that it would help certain leadership candidates is the only reason this even being discussed--otherwise it would be under way already. But choosing not to do a membership drive, when leadership aside we need to start building organization in Quebec, is also a choice and it also benefits certain candidates.

AnonymousMouse wrote:

Show of hands?

My hand is certainly up. That said I'm dissapointed that we have to pressure the leadership candidates to back a general membership drive in Quebec. Honestly I don't see why they even need to be consulted. This is something the party should have begun right after the federal election and a leadership contest having started so soon just adds more reason to get on with it.

No more delays - such as getting all the leadership candidates on board - can be afforded at this point. The party should immediately set up a phonebank and the main page for the federal party should be instructing people how to make donations to the Quebec membership drive.

Its an opportunity to grow the party and for those of us not in Quebec to reach out to our long lost allies in that province. I've said it already in these threads but if the party launches a general Quebec membership drive I'll personally commit $400 immediately (not much but if other members across Canada do the same it would have a formidable impact). I think this is the absolute best way I can financially support the party at this time and would rather give to such an effort than to the campaign of a single candidate.

It's Me D wrote:

The main page for the federal party should be instructing people how to make donations to the Quebec membership drive.

So if it is not OMOV then how is the party democratic.  There is only one way to build a viable party for the long term.  That is to get Quebec activists to sign up and build riding associations .  Any other strategy is merely short term thinking that will lead to a bust like the Mulroney Conservatives experienced.

Nicky the last tine I looked "Quebec" cannot buy a membership in the NDP however any politically active person in Quebec can.  Lets encourage our Quebec social democrats to build within the same national party structure for the long term not offer them a short term advantage that will give them more weight in who elects the leader but will leave the party without its foundational base of activists to move forward with.  

And by the way I don't believe for a minute that Topp will be seen in Quebec as any less a Quebecois merely because he has worked in other regions of Canada.  So far the two front running candidates are from Quebec and some people in Ontario are having angst that it will not be good enough to please Quebec voters.  Some things never change in Canadian politics. 

Wilf, thanks for your points. To answer your question I have not been able to sign up any new members in the last week becaue i have been in Ukraine (hiding from Malcolm's wrath) where Topp and Mulcair are equally unknown. I did sign up four friends before I left who wil vote for Mulcair and i will certainly redouble my efforts when i return in a couple weeks

nicky, enjoy Ukraine. When you get a chance, though, I am still interested in an answer to my earlier question. If you've seen something I missed (totally possible since I haven't seen any of Topp's interviews but the one), I'd like to know about it.

Thamks IP. I saw a couple interviews on P and P and i think with Don Martin where I certainly got the impression Topp was regurgitating his talking points and avoiding answering the questions asked. Maybe they are on Youtube.
He also responded on Babble to my question whether he embargoed news of the Shirley Douglas endorsement purposely to undercut Paul Dewar's launch. He said there will often be concurrent news releases with other campaigns. He did not specifically deny that he embargoed news of the endorsement for tactical reasons. I certainly thought he was dodging my question. It would be so refreshing if politicians could just learn to say yes or no.

Idealistic Pragmatist wrote:

nicky, enjoy Ukraine. When you get a chance, though, I am still interested in an answer to my earlier question. If you've seen something I missed (totally possible since I haven't seen any of Topp's interviews but the one), I'd like to know about it.

There have been several examples talked about here and elsewhere, but I can only remember two.

One was Topp's interview with Don Martin in which he was asked whether supporters of his leaked news of his candidacy the day after Jack Layton died and if members of Layton's inner circle were trying to pass him the torch. Topp basically dodge the questions. His answer were along the lines of "journalists are gonna wirte what they're gonna write" and "we're all part of Jack's team". He didn't address the point of the questions. This interview is no longer on the CTV site.

The second was this scrum in which he answers questions about whether he's the "establishment candidate" by saying the NDP fights against the establishment when it's clear the reporter is refering to the establishment within the party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQeRhkyuu9c&feature=related

You get a bit of the same flavour in this interview as well--the reporter's first three questions are all about drilling down on his first point about Topp's qualifications--but in this case it isn't that Topp doesn't answer the questions so much as that he tends to MOSTLY talk in the vacinity of the questions without REALLY answering them. This final one isn't a great example, but it goes on at some length.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04C9y0zkJSQ&feature=related

It sounds like Topp is lecturing the interviewer a lot of the time (~ Now let me tell you Mr.....). I don't think this is his intention but it seems to be how he responds to tough questions, when not speaking around them. He needs to learn to laugh more, loosen up.  Watch Mulcair for pointers. Mulcair knows how to run the to-and-fro, sometimes debating, sometimes laughing critiques off. Sometimes leaning on the questioning, sometimes backing off and letting the interviewer throw a punch while Mulcair uses the defence of humility. Public discourse is an art and this is why it pays to have been an elected figure first- you are more practiced in these things.

Read a tweet on the Pundits Guide to the leadership that said  -  "Rumour has it, next week Mulcair's mother is going to endorse Brian Topp"

Just a reminder that we're all part of the same family and we need to keep our sense of humour.

KenS wrote:

...Brian Topp will sign up lots of Quebec members without help.

And Tom Mulcair will be the primary benificiary- because of name recognition- of neutral member sign-ups.

So while there are high minded reasons for the party doing the most to expand Quebec membership, this is anything but a question without big campaign interests.

AnonymousMouse wrote:

This assumes Topp will have enough support in Quebec to find a lot of people who he'd want to sign up in the first place. What leads you to believe he will have that level of support?

I gave the answer in the part you cut out of the quote.

I am wondering what is your point in picking on this when the larger point is to say why the Brian Topp campaign doesl not have a selfish interest in party driven Quebec sign-ups: because they know they will get plenty of those without assistance.

Here is how membership sign-ups and the incentives work in a leadership race.

The incentives is mostly like what it is with voters in an election: who you want to reach is who you can identify as a supporter. This is the whole reason leadership campaigns put such an emphasis on new member sign-ups. They have no reason to prefer looking to existing members. They go where they are most likely to find people disposed to them. There is an art to that, but any serious leadership campaign figures it out for themselves.

You have a static and stilted notion of what kind of pitch and appeal Brian Topp can have in Quebec. When people get contact from the Topp campaign and here his basic pitch, they will hear things that appeal to them and are equivalent to the appeals they now have with Mulcair. Mulcair would be more than 20 to 1 in comparative appeal right now. But that means nothing. Quebec supporters have never heard of Brian Topp, but it is not going to stay that way.

Organizational capacity means a GREAT deal in how many votes you actually get in a leadership campaign. And Brian Topp easily has a big enough advantage to eliminate that [at least] 20 to 1 recognition advantage that Mulcair now has.

That said, I think Tom Mulcair will more than do fine organizationally in Quebec. I am not surprised that in the earliest days it occurs to him that the Quebec situation makes for not a level playing field. [For one thing, I heard from the Hill that Tom was really reeling from Jack's death, and not well disposed to talking about what comes next. On top of the personal stuff, he had a lot of unmitigated fun to look forward to in his central personal role building on the already amazing accomplishments of May. With Jack's death, that totally changed.]

On reflection, and getting away from his personal funk, and talking to supporters, Tom probably came to the conclusion that he will have no problem signing up members in Quebec.

Mulcairs challenge is the ROC. And that is just a fact of life- there is no leveling of the playing field to be done there.

KenS wrote:

I am wondering what is your point in picking on this when the larger point is to say why the Brian Topp campaign doesl not have a selfish interest in party driven Quebec sign-ups...

I wasn't trying to pick on this. I was just interested why you thought Topp would have or be able to generate the underlying level of support necessary to be able to identify a large number of supporters in Quebec and sell them memberships. I don't know whether he'll be able to do that or not, but it wouldn't surpirse me if he wasn't despite having a strong organization. Either way, I agree that "the Brian Topp campaign doesl not have a selfish interest in party driven Quebec sign-ups", and for me why that is the case doesn't affect the question of whether the party should hold a membership drive. I was just curious about why you thought he could sign up a lot of members beyond having organization (which is obviously necessary but not sufficient).

KenS wrote:

I gave the answer in the part you cut out of the quote.

Your previous comment that I partially quoted...

KenS wrote:

Now that I have had a chance to think through the practicalities involved, I will name the (big) elephant in the room.

Contrary to peoples fears that laissez faire on membership will lead to minimal Quebec memberships, the Topp campaign can be counted on to sign up LOTS of members in Quebec.

Because that is where the potential numbers for new members are. And while Mulcair goes into this with the name recognition, signing up members is about organization. And guess who has the lead there. A very big one.

So Brian Topp will sign up lots of Quebec members without help.

And Tom Mulcair will be the primary benificiary- because of name recognition- of neutral member sign-ups.

So while there are high minded reasons for the party doing the most to expand Quebec membership, this is anything but a question without big campaign interests.

...only seems to deal with the fact that Quebec is where the greatest number of potential new members exists and that Topp has the organization to sign up new members. My question was about why you believe he has or can generate the underlying support to be able to find people to sign up who will support him ("This assumes Topp will have enough support in Quebec to find a lot of people who he'd want to sign up in the first place.").

Your earlier comment did not deal with that question, but I can see from your later comment that you believe that "When people get contact from the Topp campaign and here his basic pitch, they will hear things that appeal to them and are equivalent to the appeals they now have with Mulcair." Fair enough.

KenS wrote:

You have a static and stilted notion of what kind of pitch and appeal Brian Topp can have in Quebec.

No, I specifically wrote "I DON"T KNOW how much support he'll [Topp WILL, future tense] have in Quebec, but it wouldn't surprise me if he were out numbered 10 or 20 to 1." I would add that it wouldn't surprise me if Topp gained more support than that either, but the reason I wouldn't be surprised if Topp's support didn't improve substantially in Quebec over the course of the campaign is that Mulcair has Jack Layton like popularity in Quebec which Topp would have to run an amazing campaign to overcome.

KenS wrote:

This is manifestly not true.
The federal party has never done membership drives.

Within the last twelve months the federal party ran a membership challenge campaign that provided resources and financial incentives for federal riding associations to recruit new members. The similar local fundraising initiative in the months prior to that also made available a central phonebank.

Aside from that, unlike in other provinces, the federal party has always (in the last 15+ years) been solely responsible for membership in Quebec and has done membership drives there through the Section office in Montreal--though, that was not the main focus for the party in Quebec in recent years.

But more importantly, now that we have 59 MPs from Quebec and no provincial party there, it is obvious that the federal party will have to dedicate more resources to membership in Quebec as we try to build our organization there. The only question is whether that starts now or waits until later. If you leave the leadership campaigns various interests out of the equation, it is clear it would be easier to do that work now.

KenS wrote:

Has Tom Mulcair brought this up recently? And more then just ‘it would be good'. Has he said recently that it is necessary for a level playing field?

I wouldn't expect Mulcair or any other candidate to keep repeating themselves on this issue, because it would look silly. The general issue of membership numbers in Quebec has come up in many different forms. Mulcair has suggested this solution. This is the solution I think would work best, whereas most discussion on Babble has until now been focused on a weighted voting system that I think is neither a good idea or likely to happen. I don't really care whether Mulcair brings it up again publicly.

Some kind words for Romeo Saganash from Olivia.

excerpt:

"Romeo had a long working relationship and friendship with Jack Layton," said Chow. "Jack spent many years persuading Romeo to run as a Member of Parliament and Romeo has done a fine job."

Malcolm wrote:

theleftyinvestor wrote:

I would hope most of them decide to act for the good of the party and not purely out of self-interest: Help set up a riding association, help make it strong and viable, and then gracefully accept the decision if they nominate someone other than the incumbent.

 

The point, though, is that their best hope of holding the nomination is to build up a strong riding association which would make an external nomination challenge more difficult.  The less they do to build up their riding association, the more likely they are to be ousted.

Those goals work well together and would be some of the best ways to carry on Jacks legacy. The NDP MPs in Quebec, with the help of their staff in the constituency office and in Ottawa (on a volunteer basis, of course) should start with a database of those who worked, donated or took a sign for them in the May 2011 election.  In most ridings that may only be a few hundred people ,but in a fair number of ridings over a thousand  Beore Xmas every single one of those persons should recieve a personal letter from their new MP thanking them for getting her elected,  a copy of Jacks letter and an invite to take part in carrying on the legacy.  Soon after that thank you letter, every single one of those persons should recieve a persoanl phone call from their new MP  thanking them for their support and an invite to carry on the legacy . In the new year,  every single one of those people should recieve a letter followed  by a phone call to come to a special open public General Meeting of the riding to elect a riding executive and to select delegates to the leadership convention.

Of course the NDP MPs (and their staff) shoudl be active in the riding they represent,, helping constituents with their problems,attending community events, walking picket lines and a wide range of meet and greets. In every riding there will be dozens of groups, labour unions, environmental groups anti-poverty activists, farmers, women, GBLTQ, members of city and town council, school boards,  Knights of Columbus, Rotary club,  who would be delighted to meet with their newly elected representative and discuss shared values and concerns.    Much of this work has to be carried out in a non-partisan way,you serve all the constituents regardless of who they voted for in the last election or who they may vote for in the next election., but there will be ample opporuntiy to do more partisan party-oriented outreach 

it would be up to the MPs to cdice if they wish to publicly support any particular candidate for leader but the invite to the people of Quebec should be to have their own say in who carries on for le bon Jack.

Every NDP Quebec MP should have a riding associaton with at leatd 300 members and a core of rding activists by the time the vote for leader comes up. That riding asociation and core of activists should grow and be able to  fund and carry out a successful re-elecion bid.  Add the work carried out by the central party,the leadership campaigns and  there should easily be over 20,000 members of the NDP/NPD in Quegbc able to vote for leader and a thousand Quebec delegates at the leadership convention.