DID WE WIN YET? Running for school board in 2010: My very excellent 7-month election campaign adventure

By LORNE RACHLIS ©

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks and love to my family – dear wife Louise and adult children Diana, Josh and Naomi – for your love, help and support.

My gratitude to the strategic advisors and principal workers on Team Lorne: Janet Fader, Pat Holloway, Larry Jones, Gail Lyon, Norm MacDonald, and Mike Neill for your advice, guidance, perseverance, and loyalty. Special thanks to Janet for her editing.

My appreciation to the 110 canvassers, donors, endorsers, and other supporters for your hard work and help.

And thank you to the 2808 people, most of whom did not know me personally, who took the trouble to study the issues and the candidates and voted for me.


Prologue

I spent most of my adult life, 37 years of it, working in Ontario (Canada) public education as a classroom teacher, principal, and supervisory officer. During the final ten years, I served as Chief Executive Officer (Director of Education) of two school districts, the first in rural southwest Ontario and then in Ottawa. I retired in August of 2008 from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board without a clear idea about what retirement meant or what I would do next. Over those 37 years, my professional and personal lives had blurred. I was my job.

I spent the two years following formal retirement sitting on boards and committees related to my previous career, doing some consulting work (research, organizational development, writing), and teaching courses in the Master of Education program at the University of Ottawa. After being “at the top” and “in the loop” for so many years, I found that the bits and pieces of mostly volunteer (read “unpaid”) work I was doing did not satisfy my need to be creative, contributing, and occupied. I even applied for a handful of jobs, and was interviewed for three of them. I was more surprised than disappointed when I was not successful. In retrospect, I must have been seen as over-qualified and over-aged.

It was during the second year of my ‘retirement’ that I decided that I did not really want another full-time job, especially in educational administration or teaching. Been there, done that. For the first time in 40 years, I stopped looking at the job display ads in the newspapers. The fact that I had tried to get that sort of job, and couldn’t get one, may have had something to do with my decision to stop looking.

I had, however, maintained my contacts in public education. I felt most comfortable in the company of the people with whom I had worked. Most of my post-retirement friends were retired educators themselves; a few were still working in public education. My “aha” moment came when I read the notice in The Ottawa Citizen early in 2010 announcing that nominations were being accepted for the position of school board member (commonly known as school trustee) in the coming fall municipal election. “Aha”, I thought, “I can continue to use my experience and be useful as a school board member! After all, I have all the credentials and experience anyone could possibly have in public education. Voters will recognize my background as impeccable, they will likely recognize my name from my years of devoted service for the school board, and they will elect me. No problem.”

I decided to explore becoming a school trustee in the electoral zone in which I live. I recalled that voters typically want their representatives to live where they run. So the evening of Saturday, March 13, I invited the incumbent to meet me at Patty’s Pub. The incumbent is Rob Campbell, someone I knew from my working days. Rob was just completing his first term as a board member. He had been acclaimed to the position, backed by the popular then-incumbent, Lynn Graham, who had decided 12 years as a school trustee was enough. Lynn had held the seat for three terms, and had been acclaimed twice herself.

Rob and I talked and drank draught beer for four hours. The conversation was mostly about his experience on the board. He told me that he felt he had accomplished all that he could as a school trustee, was considering running for city councillor, but was waiting to see if the incumbent, Clive Doucet, was running again for council, and if not Clive, then who else might be. Clive was rumored to be either giving up politics or running for mayor. In my experience, Rob does not make decisions quickly. After four hours, he concluded by saying he had not made up his mind whether or not to stand for re-election. I told Rob I had been considering running for school trustee in his zone and, as a new candidate, could not wait for him to declare his intent.

From the tone and content of the conversation, I assumed Rob would not be running again. “So,” I thought, “there will be no incumbent, I have impeccable credentials, I live in the zone. I am a sure thing. And if I declare my candidacy early, that will scare off any competition and I will be acclaimed, just like the incumbent was four years ago.” The stars were aligning. I had decided. I was going to go for it.

I checked with wife Louise, who was very supportive of my decision to become a candidate – probably because running for election and serving as a trustee would keep me busy. And from annoying her.

I filed my nomination paper in March. (In Ontario school board elections, you do not need nominators; all that is needed to run for school board in Ontario is proof of age, proof of residency, and citizenship, plus $100 deposit. The deposit is refundable on election or gaining at least 2% of ballots cast – so, I had nothing to lose since I would easily get the $100 back.) Once declared, my name appeared on the City of Ottawa elections web site as a candidate. The listing included the phone number and e-address I gave them, and interesting e-mails began to arrive. The first were from printing firms offering discounts for early orders. Come to think of it, most of the election related e-mails were from printing firms.

I drafted, re-wrote, edited and polished a media release announcing my candidacy, featuring a serious head shot of me in suit and tie. I was surprised when both the daily Ottawa Citizen and the monthly community paper The Mainstreeter ran the release pretty much as I wrote it. “This is so easy”, I thought.

It was puzzling to me that I was not immediately flooded with messages congratulating me on my candidacy. Did everyone I know miss the news item? The only calls I got were from several close friends who asked me if I had lost my mind. “Remember the long evening meetings and hundreds of pages of reports to read each weekend,” they advised. Because I had been at school board or school board committee meetings most week nights for the past 24 years, Louise had filled her evenings with courses and clubs and other activities, and had not given them up after I left the school board to watch TV with me. Also, I was used to going to evening meetings, and, having written or approved all of the school board reports for 10 years as Director, I was actually looking forward to seeing how my successor was doing in the report department and being able to say what I wanted at board meetings, not to mention being able to vote!


I Decide to Run – Now What?

I had not run for office since I was a student, which was in the previous century. Sensing that running for school board might be different from running for Head Boy at Nepean High School (I came second), I decided to consult with former and current school board trustees and other local politicians I knew to find out what I needed to do, now that I had decided to run. I immediately began a series of one-on-one meetings to get advice on what a school board campaign looked like. During the second half of March, I spoke for at least an hour with former school trustees, former city councilors and even a former mayor. They all had good advice to share, and over the course of the campaign, additional good advice was offered. Here is a summary of what they all said:

Ingredients for a Successful Political Campaign

(1) The people who will vote for you are the people you have personally engaged, preferably face to face, so start canvassing door to door now and making strategic visits to places like seniors’ residences, school council meetings, farmers’ markets, community events, school bus stops, and community association meetings.

(2) In addition to canvassing, you will have to assemble a team of volunteers to help you do those other things politicians do when running for election, things that may not gain you votes but things you will have to do any way in order not to lose votes to your opponents, things like

a. design, have printed and distribute campaign publications to every household, ideally in three waves – voters will finally notice the third one – these should be in the form of a pamphlet or rack card and contain these critical elements: your name prominently displayed (that is all they will see on the ballot; you must emphasize it so they will remember it when confronted with a list of names on the ballot), your key campaign platform points in simplified form, evidence of your community involvement, photos of you with children; and choose colors which do not associate you with a political party (immediately eliminating red, blue, orange, and green);

b. put up lots of signs on public property (with your name prominent and in white letters on a dark background – this shows better at night) and keep track of them – many (upwards of half) will have to be replaced during the course of the campaign due to mischief, vandalism, and mishap, and those left standing after the election must be taken down within 48 hours to avoid a fine;

c. participate in school board candidates’ meetings and choreograph your supporters – wearing buttons, applauding, crowding the microphone to ask you the questions for which you have good answers ready;

d. be seen in the public gallery at some school board meetings – there are voters and reporters there – ask a public question or make a delegation that complements your campaign platform and is newsworthy and can be summarized in a 10 second news bite;

e. show up and be noticed at mayoral and city councillor all-candidates’ meetings in your zone – the audience is composed of voters who are politically active – make sure they notice you, ask a question, give out pamphlets;

f. get up to date on school board issues including what the priorities are in your zone – prepare positions on these issues and priorities, including memorable phrases that summarize your positions;

g. have a snappy but sincere series of ‘elevator’ speeches of varying length, starting with a five second one to use when canvassing as the door of someone’s house begins to close, and somewhat longer ones if the respondent is too polite to close the door while you are talking;

h. get signs into shop windows on main thoroughfares with lots of pedestrian traffic;

i. get signs on private property – these show you have supporters who are willing to declare themselves;

j. leave biz cards (business-size campaign cards) everywhere you go in the zone (at least one person, the person cleaning up after you, will see it);

k. arrange for and attend ‘greet and meet’ coffee parties in supporters’ homes;

l. get a lawyer’s letter quoting the Municipal Election Act stating you are allowed to canvass in apartment buildings; canvassers can show the letter to building superintendents who don’t want to let them in. One canvasser actually flashed the letter and was told he would be let in when he returned with a police officer;

m. make yourself newsworthy: provide background information and tips to reporters covering education stories; issue periodic media releases that have a hook; letters to the editor tend to get published if they are responding to topics that have recently arisen in the news;

n. set up a web page and keep it current: build a user friendly home page and provide tabs leading to topics such as media coverage, campaign platform points and explanation, credentials, endorsements, a ‘contact me’ function, and lots of photographs and other visuals such as video clips of speeches,

o. learn all about and start using Twitter every day;

p. set up a Facebook Fan page and connect it to those other social media outlets you are using;

q. issue periodic campaign updates to canvassers, other volunteers, and anyone who has expressed an interest in your candidacy; and

r. start fundraising – the campaign will cost more than you expect – don’t solicit funds yourself (you should know who is to be asked, though); do it in a planned and coordinated way through your campaign workers; promptly handwrite and send personal thank you notes and keep your donors informed on the progress of your campaign – if you are lucky they might contribute a second time.

Up until now I was doing everything myself. This situation could not continue. From the advice given, I now knew I would need a fundraiser; also someone knowledgeable about the technical and practical aspects of electronic social networking; someone competent in public relations and writing; someone to help design campaign materials; and canvassers.

I received a package of instructions for candidates from the City Elections Office (first of 10 packages they sent). Lots of rules to follow, mostly rules about finances, spending limits, donating limits, donating money versus donating services, audits, where and when you can and cannot place signs, and so on. I opened a bank account in the name of Campaign to Elect Lorne Rachlis and subsequently found out that the account had to be in the charge of my campaign treasurer. Add another person to recruit. The rules specified a spending limit of $31,655.15. I could not come close to providing that amount, either myself or in combination with fund raising. So I had to decide how much of my own money I was willing to commit to the effort and how much I could reasonably expect to raise from the generosity of others. In other words, I would have to estimate revenue which would become the limit on expenditures. I would have to estimate costs that would fit that limit. I needed to know how much a lawn sign cost. I needed to have a budget.

Given there would be a small campaign budget (small relative to the maximum allowed), I could run a limited campaign with the help of a few friends and this would be OK if there was no or little competition. But for a campaign to reach all of the voters effectively, especially if there was serious competition, I would have to recruit lots of volunteers. I was in this race to win and therefore could not take anything for granted, like being acclaimed. I needed help deciding on the type of campaign to run, estimating the number of volunteers it would take for that campaign, and, once the number of helpers was known, revising the plan. Not simple, but surely do-able.

All municipal candidates listed on the City elections web site were invited by the Canadian Labour Congress in May to attend a workshop on how to run a municipal election campaign. The workshop itself was very practical, as non-partisan as a union-sponsored and led workshop could be. It provided a lot of good advice that was especially useful for first time candidates. “And,” I thought at the end of the weekend, “I have made a favourable impression at the workshop, so the union leaders must now like me and will endorse my candidacy.” It became clear from that workshop, if it was not already, that I had to have a campaign manager.

It was obvious that an election campaign had two main arenas: in front of the curtain, and behind the curtain. Behind the curtain operate the specialized functions noted in the long list above. Because different people will be performing these functions, there arises the need for a key central administrative function that includes planning, recruiting, supervising, coordinating, implementing, monitoring, encouraging, and motivating. That’s the job of a campaign manager.

In front of the curtain is the candidate, the product to be sold. The candidate is the public face of the campaign, whose presence and voice are crucial to success. In any campaign that is more than superficial, it is simply not possible to be the candidate and the coordinator or campaign manager. I wanted to win this election. I needed to win this election. I was going to win this election. Therefore the campaign had to be strong. I needed a campaign manager I could count on and eventually I found one.


It Starts

I began calling friends and acquaintances asking for their help on the campaign. The ones who agreed to help me out usually knew someone else who could help. We soon had 20 people involved, many of them retired educators, all of whom had in common some free time, a desire to be involved, and who expressed confidence in me.

They were all volunteers. I soon learned there is a big difference between being the CEO of a large organization with paid staff, some of whom are devoted (in the professional sense) to you, and being a candidate supported by volunteers. Each of them had personal lives that kept getting in the way of the campaign. They had activities that they were not willing or able to put completely on ‘hold’ during the campaign, so each had limits to the type of activity they would do or to the time commitment they were willing to give. We often had to make adjustments to our plans and tasks to suit their availability. For example, I couldn’t get all 20 of them together at the same time for an initial meeting, so I hosted two orientation breakfasts. Twenty is also too many people for a planning team. I needed a planning team and knew I would have to choose this inner group carefully, ensuring the team contains balance, commitment, perseverance, and competence.

There are eight schools in my electoral zone and I attended a school council meeting at each one, seven schools in the spring, and the eighth in the fall. In the spring I was graciously introduced by the council chair at the start of each meeting, said a few words, and stayed for the whole meeting. I was able to offer some advice at each school and thus, I assumed, left a favourable impression as being an involved person who knew something relevant and helpful and would therefore be a good trustee. I left a few copies of my pamphlet and book mark for people to pick up. After the council had dispersed, most of the material was still on the table for me to take to the next meeting. I was sometimes accompanied to a council meeting by a supporter and we both proudly sported the shiny new campaign buttons. I had designed the buttons myself. It had not occurred to me that I had ordered the buttons printed in Liberal red and Tory blue. Most prominent was the red, and I was occasionally mistaken as running for or otherwise affiliated with the Liberal party.

Everyone was respectful at the school council meetings I attended although I did get a few pointed questions. For example, one of the first meetings I attended was at First Avenue Public School, which currently has a student enrolment exceeding the building’s official capacity by 40%, with no possibility of expanding the building or placing portable classrooms on-site. Large classrooms have been subdivided to squeeze in more children and enrolment projections show continued growth with no place for more students unless drastic action is taken before next school year. The first question was: “The overcrowding here began when you were the Director and you didn’t do anything about it. Why should we vote for you?” Baptism under fire. My answer basically was that as Director I was responsible for 120 schools but as trustee I would be concerned about and advocate for my eight schools.

I was now recruiting for key positions on the campaign team. This inner group eventually comprised Pat Holloway (retired English department head) who agreed to be campaign manager, Mike Neill (retired school superintendent) who took on the task of treasurer, and Gail Lyon (retired school principal) lead fund raiser. They were joined by Janet Fader and Larry Jones (both former OSSTF district presidents) and former school trustee Norm MacDonald, who had run successfully for trustee several times and had managed successful campaigns for others. We called ourselves Team Lorne. At this early stage in the campaign we met on a Monday morning every few weeks at my house. Team Lorne’s job was to give me guidance and advice and to plan and implement the campaign strategy. My job was to do what they told me. I think they did their job better than I did mine.

As the campaign unfolded, I found it really hard to limit myself exclusively to the role of candidate and hand over all responsibility for the administrative tasks to Team Lorne members. I had my hand slapped more than once for, ironically enough, micromanaging. Micromanagement had been my biggest complaint about school trustees during all those years I was a senior school board official.

It was now June. Although they did not tell me until after the campaign was over, they had agreed among themselves that they would not let me down and would see the campaign through to the end. These are very special people.

Pat and Larry took on the job of dividing the zone into canvassing areas, assembled instructions for canvassers, and matched volunteer canvassers with areas for pamphleteering. Janet took on the task of communications, which she defined as issuing media releases, editing and rehearsing me on my speeches, monitoring the media, trying to get media attention, keeping the campaign calendar, and giving me wardrobe instructions. I was to wear a shirt, tie and jacket whenever I appeared in public, and had to purchase lightly colored shirts, each with a matching tie, to soften my appearance. (My only dress shirts were white – very bureaucratic. Of course they were!) Larry next took on the task of organizing sign distribution and monitoring, and scheduling my canvassing while pairing me with supporters who would accompany me. Norm was the campaign guru, whose practical campaigning advice proved to be invaluable. I relied more and more on these people as the campaign proceeded.

Where It Happened

I was running in a downtown school board zone, Zone 9, which consisted of two abutting downtown city wards of roughly equally size and population, Capital Ward and Rideau-Vanier Ward. There are 50,000 voters in Zone 9. Capital Ward is composed of distinct neighbourhoods called the Glebe, Old Ottawa East, Ottawa South, and part of Heron Park. These are for the most part well-off neighbourhoods, each with its own personality. (The use of the word Old with Ottawa East was necessitated by the amalgamation of the core city of Ottawa with surrounding municipalities in 1998. Overnight, Ottawa East was part of downtown and nowhere near the east end of the newly enlarged Ottawa. This gave rise to the heading in the Mainstreeter community paper that is shown on page 8 - Old Ottawa East resident declares candidacy for school trustee - the Old referring to Ottawa, not to the resident.

In Ontario, school board electoral zones are based on city wards and city wards are determined by the city government. Wards can be combined to form school board electoral zones, but cannot be subdivided. So while each ward of Zone 9 is reasonably congruent, there is a considerable disconnect between them. Capital Ward, with its well-heeled and well-organized electors, seems to get more attention at the school board than does Rideau-Vanier.

There are four distinct, overlapping, publicly and anachronistically funded systems of education in Ontario, going back to the British North America Act and the creation of Canada in 1867. There are Catholic and public English-language boards, and Catholic and French-language public boards, each independent of the others and all creatures of and responsible to the Ontario Ministry of Education. (Both language streams teach in both languages, but that is another story.) There are qualifications that restrict admission to Catholic and francophone schools. We (Team Lorne) estimated that 70% of the voters in Zone 9 would be eligible to vote for me, with the other 30% eligible to vote in a parallel francophone or Catholic school board election contest. That doesn’t mean all those eligible would actually vote.

In an Ottawa municipal election, typically half of the voters actually show up and vote for mayor, and almost all of them vote for city councillor in their ward. But only half of those voting for mayor and councillor go on to vote for school trustee. According to our calculations, of the 50,000 electors in the zone, about eight or nine thousand would vote in my election. I would need half of those votes to ensure my victory. No problem!

Earnest Campaigning Begins

For a few hours most days in June and July, I walked with a supporter or two, proudly displaying our shiny new campaign buttons, knocking on doors and ringing door bells in Old Ottawa East, my home neighbourhood. About one in ten of the knocks and rings were answered, and that proportion did not change much whether we walked in the morning, afternoon or evening, on week days or week ends. Occasionally someone would peak out a window to see who was calling and then not answer the door. Some people kept watching their TV, ignoring the caller. I was surprised at how many homes do not have functioning door bells, some with a sign saying “Bell does not work. Use knocker.” and some houses did not have door bells or knockers. (For that matter, I did not see even one Welcome mat.) Many homes had their mail boxes at the side of the house, which I usually discovered upon reaching the front door, usually after climbing a dozen steep steps. Some made do with letter slots but many of the slots were filled with insulation. It cannot be easy to deliver mail to these houses. We became adept at folding a pamphlet just so, and wedging it at the front entrance, usually between the door knob and door frame. Many houses had barking dogs. It can be intimidating when someone does answer the door and the dog lunges at you while you try to remember the appropriate elevator speech.

Canvassing is good aerobic exercise. Each block is like walking three – not only do you walk between houses, you also walk from the sidewalk to the front door (remember those steep stairs) and back being careful not to step on the lawn in case someone is watching. I dropped one belt notch (2.54 cm) from my waist in six weeks of canvassing.

During those six weeks, we covered half of Old Ottawa East or about 15% of the zone. To become more familiar with the entire zone, Pat and I decided to drive typical streets, about one street in four, on a Sunday afternoon. Just driving one-fourth of the streets that were going to be canvassed door to door took over three hours. This is one big zone. It became clear that I could not appear at everyone’s door over the course of the campaign, and so we would have to decide where my canvassing time would be best invested in order to procure the most votes.

Before the campaign team was assembled, I had already sketched a pamphlet, book mark, button, and biz card based on old campaign material from former school trustees. The printer turned my sketches into mock-ups and I ordered several hundred of each item so that I would have something to distribute right away.



Team Lorne re-designed all of the publications and added a rack card (three times the width of a bookmark and printed on stiffer stock), a store window sign, a lawn sign, and a banner. Irv Osterer, a teacher, community activist, first class designer and friend volunteered his talents to turn our sketches and scribblings into electronic designs. A ping pong game of e-mails from us to Irv and back again resulted in a product we liked and that he could live with, and it was sent via e-mail to the printer. The computer is our friend.

We decided to use the politically neutral color scheme of maroon and grey, and replaced the stern-faced suit-and-tie photo of me with a picture of me smiling broadly, eyes twinkling, wearing a sport coat and open shirt collar. This photo appeared on all of the campaign literature and on the web site.

In late spring and early summer not much attention was being paid to the October 25 election. Many of the people answering my knock were not even aware they could vote for school trustee, not surprising since the winning candidate had been acclaimed for the past three elections. This meant there had been almost no campaigning in the zone and on the ballot handed to public English school voters no mention of school trustees.

Here’s how it works. On October 25, each voter would receive a ballot with columns of names on it. The column on the left would list the mayoral candidates in alphabetical order (there would be 40 this year), beside it a column listing the city councillor candidates for the ward (there would be seven in Capital Ward, five in Rideau-Vanier), and on the right a column of school trustee candidates. Each ward had four different ballots available so that each voter could be handed a ballot listing the candidates for the school board they supported. Because of the acclamations to Ottawa-Carleton District School Board Zone 9 for the previous three municipal elections, there had been no serious campaigning for the position (the winner simply stopped campaigning once the nomination deadline had passed and they were unopposed) and on the ballots for those three elections there was no mention of trustee candidates.

Some people thought they had to have children in school in order to vote for school trustee. Many others had no interest in voting for school trustee, did not think it important to do so, nor did they think it worthwhile becoming informed, a position they seemed to hold dearly. I wrote an opinion column about the role of school boards and school trustees, and their impact on issues ranging from the future of society to individual property values and hence property taxes. (In Ontario, residential property taxes are revised annually based on assessment which in turn is based on sale prices of similar homes in the neighbourhood). It was printed in The Ottawa Citizen on Thursday, August 26th with the heading “Your tax dollars, your vote”  and we made copies of it to be handed out by canvassers as needed and for pick up from tables at events I would be attending.

Whenever someone told me they were not voting, out came a copy of the op ed article. The handout was usually refused. The refusal was usually more vehement and less polite than the original “I don’t vote” statement. Apparently “I don’t vote” meant a lot more than just that, including I don’t want to vote, I don’t want to know more about voting, and get out of my face.

Daytime knocks were answered mostly by older people, some by young mothers (and one father), and, depending on the neighbourhood, a few by housekeepers. Several of the seniors wanted to talk, sometimes about the distant election but mostly complaining about politics and politicians in general. Occasionally a lonely senior would want to talk about their personal lives. I was hard put to get away from the woman who began reminiscing about her late husband, starting with when they first met. I managed to excuse myself and get away by the time her story reached their engagement.

In the mornings, people often answered the door still in their sleep costumes. One man answered the door with a towel wrapped around his waist. He did not appear to be wearing anything else, and he was not wet.

One sunny summer afternoon in July, I rang a door bell at a large house, waited what I thought was enough time for the door to be answered, and had turned around and was beginning to descend the front steps when the door opened. A young woman appeared with her dog. She called me back and apologized for taking so long to get to the door. She had been sun bathing in the back yard and was wearing a perfectly fitting thong bikini. Staring at the bridge of her nose, I told her I was running for school trustee. “Oh,” she said, “I just graduated from Glebe.” I gamely said, “It’s a wonderful school and we want to keep it that way. Here,” and I pushed a pamphlet at her, “give this to your parents.” I turned and did not look back until I heard the door close.

The Ottawa Exhibition (formerly the Central Canada Exhibition, latterly known as SuperEx) is held annually for 10 days at the end of August at Lansdowne Park, which happens to be in Zone 9 in the Glebe. This year, SuperEx announced Municipal Election Day on August 28th, the last Saturday of its run. We paid $50 to rent a table. It seemed like a good idea to get exposure to voters since the venue was within the zone. We also did not want any opponents to be there without us. The tables were situated in a dark building off to the side of the fairground, away from the hustle and bustle of the attractions, and with no signage that I could find announcing we were there and pointing the way in. Without reading the small posted Notice of Today’s Events, there was really no reason for any fair goer to approach that building, let alone go in.

I was the only school trustee candidate to rent a table. No incumbent elected municipal official was there. Taking turns sitting at my table with me were Pat, Gail, Sprague Plato, daughter Diana, and son Josh’s friend Jennifer Gee. Ten wannabes had rented tables; nine of them were running for city council or mayor. We spent most of our time visiting each other. The only table to get much action was that of a councillor candidate who had set up a model train and chatted up the passersby, mostly boys under the age of 12, on the topic of light rail transit, a major city election issue (again). Although most of my pamphlets were left on the table, to be packed up and taken to the next event, I noted that many candies and buttons had disappeared – taken, mostly, I presumed, by children. This was the first time I used my 3’ x 6’ banner! We attached it to the table using duct tape. The picture of my face on the banner was larger than life. This may have affected the amount of traffic to the table.

We had been keeping an eye on the City Elections web site and, as September approached, the number of candidates grew. Rob Campbell had changed his mind, or perhaps made up his mind, and was running for re-election. My name was on the list. And now someone named Susan Miller had registered to run in Zone 9 as had someone named Daniel Rogers. We had not heard either of those names before in a school board context or in any context for that matter. Googling Susan’s name, we found that she had run for school commissioner in Quebec, receiving 32 votes. The 32 votes represented 8.5% of eligible voters, and were enough to get her elected there. Googling Daniel’s name resulted in no listing. Nothing. Nada. Not a peep.

It was now September and Team Lorne was meeting every Monday morning at campaign headquarters, aka Chez Lorne. When I noted on Twitter which school council I would visit next, Susan Miller showed up at the next meeting. This happened twice. At Hopewell, when asked to introduce ourselves, when asked to introduce herself and say a few words about why she was running, she gave her name, said she was running because no one should be acclaimed, and sat down. When I stopped tweeting where I was going, she stopped coming. She got her main media coverage when she announced that every day she would register to run in a different trustee zone in order, as she put it, to encourage others to run so there would be no acclamations. In the end, without saying why, she settled on running for city councillor in a downtown ward, and was defeated.

Daniel Rogers was a curious nominee. He did not list any contact information on the list of nominees on the City elections web site. All other candidates gave a phone number, most also gave an e-mail address. He had nothing. No profile on Google. No web site. No campaign literature. He never appeared at any function. We thought this was curious if not peculiar. Why would anyone do that?

A day or so before nomination deadline time at 2 p.m. on September 10, the name Julian Kirby appeared on the list of nominees, and on the morning of September 10, so did the name Helen Gruber. With Susan Miller gone, we were now five on the Zone 9 ballot, four men and one woman. This time there would be three columns on the municipal ballot. There would be no acclamation. The race was on!

The Real Campaign

Although I had been in campaign mode since March, most candidates did not begin campaigning publicly until after Labour Day. During the weeks from Labour Day (September 6) through Election Day (October 25), I was out walking the streets up to four hours most days, accompanied by one or two supporters.

I would park my car in the heart of an area targeted for canvassing and place campaign signs in the car windows on all four sides. We then started walking down opposite sides of a street and ring or knock on every door, leaving a pamphlet at each. (For streets with residences only on one side, we would leap frog.) We each had our patter ready, depending on how quickly the resident closed the door on us. The difference in patter was that I identified myself as the candidate and closed with the tag line, “Remember, on October 25 you vote for mayor, for councillor, and me for school trustee.” My canvassing partner would close with, “Lorne is on the street right now if you would like to meet him or ask a question.” This seldom happened.

No matter what time of day we went canvassing only about 10% of our knocks or rings were answered. Of the 10% who came to the door, only one in ten of them (that equates to 1% of doors knocked on) would actually have a question for me, and we had some good conversations at the door with those people. I was invited into a house only once, by a woman who said she had guests for tea who would like to meet me. Indeed, there were five other people in her living room having tea, and they did ask me some questions. I was not invited to stay for tea.

While canvassing, we also made a point of accosting people (that’s a strong word, but …) as they walked on the sidewalk. It was interesting watching people decide whether or not to cross the street to avoid us, or to keep walking towards us. Most practiced eye avoidance as they got near, which was difficult since I usually parked myself in their path. Despite our interrupting their journey, most people were polite and accepted a pamphlet. No one wanted to stop and talk – they were on their way somewhere.

Rogers Cable invited all municipal candidates to come to its office on Richmond Road in Westboro on Sunday, September 12th for the taping of individual 90-second campaign messages. We were told they would broadcast the spots on their cable channel and post them on their web site. Janet and I spent considerable time honing and then rehearsing my message, and me on memorizing it, since there would be no cue cards or teleprompter. Rogers did broadcast the tapes, but did not advertise that fact very well and I missed seeing myself. The school trustee tapes never did appear on the web site. After the broadcasts, I did get one phone call from a friend to tell me he had seen my tape (by accident because he was surfing the channels). The message from my friend was that I looked good. In answer to the question, “What did you think of what I said?” the answer was, “I don’t remember.”

Because there is little media coverage of school board election campaigns, a number of associations send survey forms to candidates, some publish the results for their members to see, and some also endorse one of the candidates. In this election in Zone 9, candidates were asked to submit answers to survey questions from the two teacher unions (elementary and secondary), from four community newspapers (Mainstreeter, Glebe Report, OSCAR (Ottawa South Community Association), and Perspectives Vanier), from the Association of Bright Children, and from a local community group. We labored long and diligently to shape just the right answers, depending on who was asking and how they had skewed the questions. To their credit, all of them published my answers verbatim, in the newspaper or on the web site.

We also purchased small ads, using the biz card content as the basis, in the local community papers and newsletters. Paying for these ads, for pamphlets and for lawn signs comprised the large majority of expenditures of the campaign.

The group of 20 supporters had by now expanded to 40 people who said they were willing to hand deliver pamphlets door to door. To prepare for the delivery process, Team Lorne met one Saturday morning in my garage where the publications and canvas bags were stored. The canvas bags, with my name printed on them, were for the canvassers. (Get it? Canvas bags for canvassers! I had to have it explained to me.)

Each bag was loaded with 500 pamphlets, 100s of the various cards, instructions, maps showing their distribution area, a copy of the lawyer’s letter outlining their right to canvas in apartment buildings, campaign buttons, and paper and pens to make notes. Notes were to be taken recording who was willing to take a lawn sign, or who indicated support so they could be called on Election Day reminding them to vote.

On Wednesday, September 15th we held a major kick off event for the canvassers in the upstairs room at Maxwell’s Bistro on Elgin Street. Everyone showed up! Gail was the jovial host, a delightful MC. Following short but inspirational addresses by me and Pat, we distributed the bags and walked the canvassers through the contents. We were very well organized and very optimistic, and continued to be over the next few weeks as canvassers called in to report they needed more pamphlets or that they had completed their routes. No one turned in notes.

We encouraged the canvassers to recruit a friend or relative or two to help with the actual distribution of materials, as we had estimated hand delivering in each area would required upwards of 20 hours of walking and dropping pamphlets. We wanted this wave to be completed within three weeks. The canvassers listened intently and were very focused. A few expressed delight at the large turnout and said that knowing there were so many involved made them feel much better about their participation. “This is a real political campaign!” one of them declared. It was a glorious evening and all of us left energized and motivated.

The canvassers distributed nearly 20,000 pamphlets door to door in September and into the first week of October. For the areas not covered by this hand delivery, including some large apartment buildings, we purchased delivery from the post office. During the week before Election Day, 15,000 pamphlets were distributed through Canada Post. “There!” I thought. “Every elector in the zone now knows all about me and can find out even more by accessing my web page, whose address is prominently featured at the bottom of the back page of each pamphlet, which they will have diligently read.” Why, you might ask, didn’t we do this for the entire zone? And if three waves of publications are needed before they are noticed, why didn’t we do it three times? Because that would have exceeded the legal spending limit. And my budget was one-third of the legal limit.

Over the course of the campaign, we made a point of attending and being noticed at major community events. For example, the Old Ottawa East Community Association annually sponsors an event in June called The Main Event, where else but on Main Street, adjacent to the new farmers’ market, all on the grounds of St. Paul University. I was invited to be a celebrity chef at the burger booth and spent a pleasant hour on Saturday, June 25 flipping burgers while pointing to my campaign button. Rob was also a celebrity flipper but not at the same time. He did not wear any campaign button.

My wife Louise and I paid for a table in the arts and crafts section of the Main Event. We displayed several of her excellent water colour paintings for sale, a few of my very excellent laminated photographs for sale, and piles of campaign literature. (She got a commission for a painting based on one we were selling. I was able to take all of my photos home.) I offered a doggy treat to the owner of every dog that passed by the table. Many stopped to chat (owners, not dogs). We got a lot of mileage out of those biscuits. Thanks to Jim Watson for the idea.

Louise and I went to see the Labour Day parade and picnic and circulated around McNabb Park, chatting with the celebrants. Two weeks later I attended a community BBQ at the Sandy Hill Community Centre on Sunday afternoon, September 19. I felt awkward about approaching people and asking them to vote for me until I remembered the bookmarks. Everyone can use a bookmark. Sure enough, over the course of an hour or so, I had addressed every adult at the BBQ with the opening comment, “Would you like a free bookmark? It has important school dates on it. I’m running for school trustee.” No one declined the bookmark and some asked for more than one. I gave out over 100 bookmarks that afternoon. (We had not expected them to be particularly useful. They turned out to be our most popular item. Who knew?) At least a dozen people at the BBQ engaged me in conversation about my platform and to tell me what was wrong with school, usually the one where their child was having trouble.

Son Josh had set up a blogspot page for me and set up a counter and by October we were getting over 200 hits per week. www.rachlis.ca hosted my resume, the campaign platform, media coverage, endorsements copies of all published campaign literature, news and announcements, and photos. Josh also set up a Twitter account for me and at peak I had over 200 followers. He also arranged for my entries in Twitter and the blog page were automatically posted to the Facebook Fan Page he had set up for me. I spent a lot of time and effort writing and posting on these social media outlets but, in retrospect, we could not find that there had been much return for the investment. Most voters in zone 9 did not attend to them, and most of the viewers and followers were not voters in zone 9.

The bills were mounting and the seed money I had provided was almost used up. We assembled a list of 100 potential donors, mailed out letters, and followed up with phone calls. Eventually we had positive responses from 45 people and raised funds to cover nearly one third of the campaign expenses. I did personally write to each donor to thank them using thank you notes that Louise had painted or constructed. The greater the donation, the more effusive the thanks. In school board elections in Ontario there is no tax benefit or tax credit of any kind for campaign donations. But there are strict donation limits and many accounting rules. For example, no individual or organization can donate more than $750 to any candidate. All donations over $100 are publicly reported in the mandatory audited statement. Service in lieu must be listed at retail. No cash donations over $25. These campaigns tend to be mostly self-financed or small, or both. So if you don’t have volunteers to deliver your pamphlets, your name and your message gets lost.

Larry canvassed stores on Bank Street, the main commercial street through the Glebe, but no chain store would accept a campaign window sign, and very few of the independents would, either. I persuaded three stores that I frequent near my house in Old Ottawa East to put signs in their windows, and at one they asked me to autograph it. I felt like a movie star! We thought 8-1/2” x 11” signs would be small enough that they would be acceptable to merchants for their windows. But when sign that size was placed in a window, it was too small to be noticed.

I knew that in any head to head meeting, given my years of public speaking experience and extensive knowledge of the topic, I would do extremely well against the other candidates. I had attended school council meetings of seven of the eight zone schools in the spring, with the exception of Lady Evelyn Alternative School. An opportunity for a head-on meeting with main rival Rob seemed to be at the September meeting (evening of Monday the 27th) of the Lady Evelyn school council which I was to attend, when the chair of the council told me that Rob would also be there. I arrived early to chat with the council members. Rob had not arrived by the time the meeting began, so I gave my three minute pitch and invited questions. There was one question: “Rob is a good trustee and deserves a second term. Why don’t you run somewhere else?” The nub of my answer was that I was running here because I lived here. The longer answer included why I was the best candidate. I always tried not to put down another candidate, but rather to say positive things about myself. This (the former, not the latter) required extreme effort on my part.

From conversations at the door or at meetings, we found consistency in the issues that people raised. These were issues on matters ignored or mishandled by the school, by the trustee, or by the school board. Sometimes the matters had been initiated locally and sometimes by the provincial government. Sometimes the matters were ones of principle and sometimes of implementation. These issues included overcrowding at two of the schools with no solution in sight, poor implementation of full day learning for 4- and 5-year olds, phasing out of special education congregated classes, pressure to close alternative schools, surprise boundary changes to an Early French Immersion program, lack of communication with the trustee, no jobs for newly graduated teachers. Team Lorne brainstormed and rehearsed answers for me to use.

Over the course of the campaign, I asked about 30 prominent people if they would endorse my candidacy. Most said yes and provided a sentence or two of support. These were posted on my web page and a selection appeared on the campaign literature. Most of those who declined cited their jobs as prohibiting them from being publicly political. Two said they would not choose between me and Rob and would therefore endorse neither.

Meanwhile, we were waiting for endorsements from the elementary and the secondary teacher unions, knowing that an endorsement from the secondary union would result in an endorsement from the Ottawa District Labour Council. The announcements were due by Labour Day (how coincidental!) but we had heard nothing by the second week of September. The secondary union had endorsed Rob four years ago. Then we heard. The secondary union was not endorsing any candidate in Zone 9, which we interpreted as positively as we could – that is, we concluded that they had withdrawn their endorsement from Rob. The elementary union endorsed Rob. With endorsement came the potential for union donations, individual teacher donations, and for teacher volunteers. If endorsement came with donations, donations over $100 will appear in the audited financial statements. I am not sure if endorsement by the teacher unions generates sufficient teacher or parent support to make a difference.

In any event, endorsements from the unions or other groups got little media coverage and The Citizen ran a large story saying endorsements have little impact on elections, except in a close race when they could be worth a percent or two. Therefore, not to worry.

The Home Stretch

Things were happening very quickly now. Between our regular Monday meetings there were dozens of phone calls and smaller meetings.

Very few people were willing to post campaign lawn signs on their own property. Rob and I were the only two candidates with lawn signs. I tried for at least one sign on each street running from an arterial road into each community, so that commuters and walkers would be exposed to my name every time they passed by.

Signs on public property are restricted to the 60 days before Election Day and are further restricted by bylaws about where they can be placed. In addition, the National Capital Commission, which is responsible for a lot of public space in Ottawa, does not permit any signs. This election, the 60 days period began on Saturday, September 25th. That morning, we awoke to find all of the main roads and intersections in the zone plastered with Rob’s yellow and black signs in several sizes, traditional two-sided signs attached to wooden stakes driven into the ground.

We had ordered 200 2’ x 3’ signs with innovative plastic ‘spider stakes’, the kind designed so they can be pushed into the ground easily with your foot. These signs had wires protruding upwards from the top so that the signs could be attached by sliding them down onto the wires. No need to purchase and saw lumber into wooden stakes, stapling signs to the stakes, or pounding them into the ground. We thought we had made the wise, modern choice.

When we ordered the signs, we did not know that they were printed only on one side. And yes, the stakes were easily pushed into the ground. That meant they were also easily pulled out. They sometimes worked loose in a strong wind and sometimes they snapped off, leaving the point in the ground and the broken stake unusable. We had 200 one-sided signs. To be seen from more than one direction, we needed to place two of them. We ordered another 100.

The good news is that we detected little sign vandalism, either planned or spontaneous. The bad news is that we still had to replace about half of the signs over the course of the 60 day signs on public property window. It took daily monitoring to keep our signs up and in place. Rob’s signs outnumbered ours three to one on public property. “Good for name recognition but not an indication of popular support,” I muttered to myself. But name recognition is what counts on voting day. So we made sure we had at least one sign where he sometimes had two, three or four in a row. Let him look profligate and ecologically incorrect! Rob also had one inexpensive looking three-fold pamphlet printed in black on yellow photocopier paper, same color scheme as the lawn signs. We discovered later that several candidates in other trustee electoral zones had the same color scheme, and this, we surmised, was not coincidental, despite their denials.

Sunday evening, September 19, 9:00 p.m. I am sitting in a waiting room outside the broadcast studio of Talk Radio 580, which is located in the heart of the downtown Byward Market. At this time of day on a Sunday, almost everything is closed except for a few bars, and the streets and sidewalks are mostly empty. This is Ottawa the Good, a federal civil service town and tomorrow is a work day.

I can hear the 9 o’clock newscast over a speaker in the room. Rabbi Reuven Bulka, the dean of Ottawa’s Jewish clergy, hosts a weekly two hour phone-in show on diverse topics. I was to be the only guest this week, and the show was to start at 9:05 p.m., immediately following the 9 o’clock newscast. The rabbi and I had talked on the phone earlier in the week and he said it would be an informal, friendly chat, with the occasional phone call from a listener that he would manage. The topic I was to discuss was public education. I was ready. And at 9 o’clock becoming a bit anxious.

At 9:01 the rabbi appeared. “Come on in,” he said, breezing past me as he took off his jacket while heading into the studio. “You sit here,” he pointed to a bar stool. “Put on these head phones.” He reminded me that his was a non-partisan show so I should not campaign, but talk as if I were the elder statesman of local public education, which I agreed I was. The technician did a sound check and we were on the air.

“I have with me as my only guest this evening Dr. Lorne Rachlis, formerly the director of education for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, who is now running for election as a school trustee in Zone 9.” If that’s non-partisan ……Turning to me he asked, “So, Lorne, what do you think about public funding for Catholic schools?”

I managed to get past the first question unscathed and the rest of the two hours sped by rather quickly. He seemed to be genuinely interested in how things worked in public education and in what the issues were. After that first curve ball, he pitched softly, asking gentle questions that did not require technical or complicated answers, questions such as, “What does a school board do? What does a school trustee do? What accomplishments are you particularly proud of?”

After each commercial break, he introduced me in the same (non-partisan?!?) way. “This is strange,” I thought. “But it must be a good sign if Ottawa’s chief rabbi is promoting me.” Over the course of the two hours, we had one call, from someone who identified himself as a school custodian, asking if I agreed that students should never be given a failing grade. I had rehearsed answers to questions and I carefully reviewed everything I was about to say on air before I said it. There was a seven second delay between uttering and broadcasting, so censoring was possible, but not needed.

The rabbi does not announce his guests ahead of time, so tuning in brings a surprise for his listeners each week. I posted news of my guest appearance on my web page and tweeted many times that I would be on the show. I sent emails in the week leading up to the show to everyone I knew, telling them of my good fortune and asking them to tune in. A few friends and family members told me they had caught at least part of the show and were very impressed. I am grateful to the Rabbi for his consideration.

Meanwhile, Janet produced and distributed two media releases, one on September 21, highlighting my education career and the second on October 6, decrying the lack of media attention on trustee campaigns.

The morning of Thursday, September 23, Pat and I attended the United Way annual campaign kick-off breakfast. We wore our buttons and circulated among the tables offering pamphlets. Rob was a celebrity chef, dishing out sausages in the buffet line. Again, he did not wear a campaign button. Come to think of it, I never saw one.

Saturday, October 2 was the date of the first of two advanced polls. Louise and I voted. I knew I had at least one vote. That evening was the second Ottawa Board of Education reunion. To be polite and honor the occasion, I carefully avoided campaigning during the event. I did, however, help greet people at the door. A few of them asked me how the campaign was going. Very few.

The evening of Thursday, October 7, several community associations co-hosted a Capital Ward all candidates’ meeting for city councillors at Glebe Collegiate Institute. I asked the organizers to extend the meeting to include school trustee candidates, and if this was not possible, to hold a meeting just for us. Eventually we were told we could set up a table down the hall from the main foyer upon which the auditorium opens, but unfortunately (for us) could not otherwise participate in the meeting. We arrived a half hour early to get a good spot. Rob was already there and had taken the table closest to the auditorium doors. We met candidate Julian Kirby for the first time, a twenty-five-year-old recent graduate from the University of Manitoba, currently unemployed. He handed me his campaign biz card, which was his only printed material. No sign of Helen Gruber or the invisible Daniel Rogers. We spread our publications over the table next to Rob’s and got to use the big banner again.

Since there was very little action at the tables that we were told to use, all of the school board candidates migrated to the front entrance of the school. Audience members had to run a gauntlet of outstretched arms ending in hands waving campaign pamphlets at them. Most people took them. The same people were a lot less receptive when faced with our gauntlet run at the end of the meeting.

I spent several Saturday mornings and afternoons at the Main Street farmers’ market, once by myself and twice with Pat. Having a campaign worker accompany me, no matter the occasion, always seemed to result in better contact with potential voters. I had many conversations and got good feedback, including people who told me after the election they had voted for me because of that encounter at the market.

Early on the morning of Thursday, October 7th, Pat and I stationed ourselves at the west end of the Corktown pedestrian bridge over the Rideau Canal, addressing people as they walked from Sandy Hill or the local transitway station on their way to work in centre town. (At the end of the campaigning shift, we followed the street most people had taken and discovered that Ottawans, being the good citizens they are, had not tossed my pamphlets on the street.)

Checking with some people after the election, and from e-mails received, it is clear that we generated many of our votes from these personal, one-on-one contacts at the door, on the sidewalk, at the market, and at meetings. One young woman emailed me to say that she had voted for me. She described herself as small and young-looking and told me she was impressed by the fact that I had taken the time to engage her in conversation at the Corktown Bridge, when someone else might have dismissed her as too young to vote and therefore not worth talking to. We were also told by voters that they had read the paper material or checked the web page after a personal contact and without that contact would not have done so.

I had tried to persuade school councils to host, or to cooperate and co-host, all-candidates’ meetings for school trustees. The council at Hopewell Public School was the only school in the zone to respond positively, and on Tuesday, October 12th it hosted the only meeting for Zone 9 candidates in the entire campaign. After our experience staking out a table at Glebe, this time we arrived at 5:30 p.m., an hour early, to get the best table. Rob arrived around 6:00 and got the second best table. No other candidate set up a table. As it turned out, almost no one approached the tables. The meeting was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. and people started arriving 15 minutes before then. Seven of my supporters were there by now, so we donned buttons and spread out into the hall, chatting up the voters as they arrived. Good thing we arrived really early.

Julian was there. A white haired woman spent quite a bit of time chatting up Gail Lyon, asking lots of questions about me. When the meeting was about to begin, the woman went to the front table and sat behind the sign that said Helen Gruber. She had not identified herself to Gail and she had not done any electioneering before the meeting.

My son Josh got permission from the chair to film the meeting. He edited what he shot to show only my opening and closing statements and my answers to the questions and posted the clip on my Facebook fan page. There were fewer than 40 people in attendance, seven of them wearing Elect Lorne buttons. As expected, my answers to questions were tight and to the point compared to the other candidates. I won!

The highlight of the evening for me occurred at the end when one audience participant approached a member of Team Lorne and said he came to the meeting not knowing who to vote for. Now, he told us, he knew he would be voting for me and would be asking his friends to do the same. He handed over a $100 donation and volunteered himself and his son up to help with canvassing in Ottawa South. YES!

I went from that meeting to what I thought was the regular monthly meeting of the Old Ottawa East Community Association. Turns out they were hosting an all-candidates meeting for councillors, followed by one for school trustees. Surprise! Julian was there, as was a Catholic school trustee candidate. It appears the message may not have gotten through to all trustee candidates. The 15 people in attendance were polite and stayed through both meetings. I was asked by an audience member why it is impossible to fire a bad teacher. I gave a very good answer (I spent several minutes answering the question but boiled down it is possible but in fairness there must be due process) and the Catholic trustee agreed with me. The questioner approached me after the meeting and said he was satisfied by the answer. Another vote in the bag!

On two Thursdays, October 13th and 20th, we held neighbourhood coffee parties to meet the candidate. They were hosted by campaign supporters who are parents of local students and who live in the zone. Jessica Raslack held the first one and Joanne Wink the second; each had seven guests to their homes. Questioning by the participants was insightful and pointed. The guests had been invited because they were considered to be informal opinion leaders in the community. Some told me afterwards that they had come to the meeting skeptical and left as supporters. We expected there would be a ripple effect as they talked to their neighbours after the events. Some of them agreed to have a campaign lawn sign. Yes!

There were many memorable moments during the campaign, some eliciting quite emotional reactions. One of them happened on a Saturday afternoon when I was canvassing with someone I had not known before, a teacher who had called Pat, offered to help get me elected, and agreed to deliver pamphlets. Larry had assigned us to canvas together. We were walking and chatting and, to make conversation, I asked, “So why did you volunteer to work on my campaign?” His answer caused me to stop dead. He said, “Because you are my hero.”

Thinking he might be joking, I said, “What do you mean?” He told me that we had not met personally but that he had attended meetings at which I had spoken as Director of Education, he had read papers I had written, and followed what was happening in the district and at the board while I was Director. He spoke to other teachers and to administrators and was impressed with what I had done in those five years. I didn’t know what to say, but the good feeling I got when he spoke is still with me when I recall that day. No one ever called me their hero before.

There are a dozen seniors’ residences in the zone and I phoned them all, asking if I could address the residents. Four said yes and I visited in the two weeks before Election Day. (The closer to the day, the better, I was advised by the program coordinators.) I learned that addressing a group of seniors in a seniors’ residence, when they are seated in a social area with comfortable chairs, was not a useful way to get their attention, and hence their votes. I found it best to introduced myself to the gathering and then go from table to table or chair to chair, making my pitch person to person. Almost every senior I spoke to was interested in what I was saying, and several had good questions to ask.

Janet accompanied me to one of the homes where she generated quite a buzz. I think they would have voted for her because of the good impression she gave. In trying to discover the connection between us (‘campaign supporter’ seemed too obvious, given how well we worked together as partners), the residents dubbed her Mrs. Lorne, a sobriquet she has used several times since. Despite our best efforts, and even though most of the homes had polling stations right in the building, the voter turnout was small. We later found that I did get 90% of the vote at one of the homes, 9 of the 10 ballots cast. Every vote counts.

On October 18, at our final Monday morning Team Lorne meeting before Election Day (which was on the following Monday), we decided to hold a Thank You celebration at Maxwell’s for the Wednesday following Election Day (October 27th). This would be our way of saying thank you to our 110 campaign workers (the sum of Team Lorne members, canvassers, donors and endorsers). We fully expected it to be a victory celebration.

We also discussed what surprises Rob might have up his sleeve for this, the final week of the campaign. The topic was too hypothetical and the strategy we adopted was for all of us to be reachable if something arose so we could then decide on a response.

As it turned out, the surprise came from our side. Ottawa Citizen columnist Randall Denley called to interview me. He had spoken to me in September and quoted me extensively in a column he wrote about the resignation of my successor from the school board. He told me at that time my candidacy was the only newsworthy event in the school board campaign (former CEO runs for office), and said that he would do a column on me later in the campaign. And he did, endorsing me enthusiastically, unequivocally and at some length. The column appeared on Tuesday, October 19th, just a few days before voting day. The result was assured! My election was now a piece of cake!

As I went door to door that day and the next, half of the people coming to the door told me they did not read The Citizen, and those who had read Wednesday’s paper either did not remember the column or did not connect me to it. “Never mind,” I thought. “The local daily newspaper has endorsed me! That’s the icing on the cake!

On the morning of Thursday, October 21st, Joanne Wink drove me on a school bus route in Sandy Hill, just ahead of the school bus, so I could meet, greet, and pamphlet (that’s a verb now) parents waiting with their children.

On Saturday, October 23, six of us gathered and then split into pairs to walk the sidewalks of Bank Street, the main street of the Glebe, from Lansdowne Park to Clemow Avenue. We discovered that we could contact more people by standing on a busy street corner than by walking, so we tried that for a while. After a couple of hours on Bank Street, we moved to Rideau Street, the main commercial street separating Sandy Hill from Lower Town, and walked between King Edward Avenue and Chapel Street. (We wanted to keep some distance from the Rideau Centre, Ottawa’s downtown shopping mall, assuming that most of the people there were not local residents.) There was very little pedestrian traffic on this part of Rideau Street. So Harvey Scott (a retired school principal) and I drove over to Vanier and stood in front of the Shoppers Drug Mart on Montreal Road, near the Vanier Parkway, waving a lawn sign at passing cars. We were noticed. Half of the drivers waved in return. I got several thumbs up gestures and only one rude finger.

On, Sunday, October 24, the day before voting was to take place, I attended a family fun day at The Firehall Community Centre, the converted home of the Ottawa South Community Association. Just as I drove up in my car, a parking space opened up beside the main entrance to the community centre. With my signs in place in the car windows, everyone attending the fair would see the advertising. Golden! And obviously a sign of good fortune.

Daughter Diana and I stood by the main door and offered a free bookmark to everyone as they left the community centre. Almost everyone took one.

To show I was a community supporter, I bought raffle tickets for Diana on a package of beauty products and for me on a package of CDs by a local singer. We won them both! This I took as another good omen. I was further heartened when David Chernushenko, candidate for city councillor, and Jim Watson, candidate for mayor, came over at different times to greet me, and both told me they had voted for me in an advanced poll. (Both of them were elected the next day.) More good portents!

Election Day

To keep my mind occupied on Election Day, members of Team Lorne took me to the Yangtze Restaurant in Chinatown for dim sum lunch. Before and after lunch I raked leaves in front of my house. The yard is 18’ wide. The two trees in front, neither on my property, yielded ten (yard waste) bags full. These were not sufficient distractions. I was appropriately but not overly nervous about the outcome that was going to be announced later in the day.

At 7:30 that evening, Team Lorne began to gather in the downstairs TV room at Chez Lorne, in front of the big screen tuned to a local election news channel. My lap top was accessing the City’s election results web site. Polls closed at 8 p.m. and voting had been done by computer (Using the pencil provided, completely fill in the oval to the right of the name of the candidate you are voting for – or words to that effect) so results should roll in quickly.

8:05 p.m. and no results. 8:10 p.m. 8:15 p.m. At 8:20 the first polls reported. Surely this was an aberration. Rob was ahead. And not by a little bit. By 8:45 the lead had solidified at 2 to 1 in his favor. By 9 p.m. it was over. Rob had 6329 votes, 49%, of the total cast, I had 2808 or 22%. Surprisingly, Helen Gruber, who had not noticeably campaigned (one public appearance, a pamphlet but no ads, no signs), had 2215 votes and the invisible Daniel Rogers had 688, almost as many as Julian Kirby (818), who had actually done some electioneering.

We toasted each other with champagne in honour of a campaign well thought out and well executed. We agreed we had done all we could have done, and would reconvene at the supporters thank-you do on Wednesday evening. We agreed to study the results poll by poll, and to meet in a week’s time once more as Team Lorne for analysis and debriefing. I invited Team Lorne to have dinner with me the following week to thank them, and we decided on Mama Teresa’s, the classic Italian restaurant where politicians from Parliament Hill hang out. I called Rob at his home to congratulate him on his win. After several minutes of his musing about why he had not received more votes, I said goodbye and rang off.

Wednesday evening October 27th at Maxwell’s. Over the course of the evening, 40 people dropped in with up to 20 present at one time. There was no one good time for a formal thank you and presentation. I spoke for several minutes with each person.

I had asked people to come with anecdotes arising from their campaign experiences. The best one I heard was from my friend Rob Dunlop, who had been Assistant Director of the Ottawa Board of Education when I was a rookie superintendent. One Saturday morning he was shopping at the west end Parkdale farmers’ market and had forgotten to take off my campaign button. Another shopper approached him and asked what he was running for. He explained he was not running himself but was helping a friend get elected to the school board. “What’s the school board,” he asked. Rob told him. “Hah!” snorted the shopper. “He’ll make all kind of promises to get elected and then he’ll go into his office, shut the door, and do nothing. Oh, no,” replied Rob. “You’re confusing a trustee with the Director.” You had to be there. Rob is the best raconteur on the team.

If that line of thinking is typical of a substantial part of the electorate, then it doesn’t really matter who gets elected – once in, they all do nothing, including keeping their promises; so why bother becoming informed about the issues and the candidates? Why bother voting? Food for thought.

About half way through the evening, we gathered those present together, Pat and I expressed our gratitude, and Janet presented me with a wonderfully arranged scrapbook of campaign highlights that she had put together.

This was one of the few occasions when I have not had adequate words to express how I was feeling – grateful for the personal support, grateful for the time and energy devoted, grateful for the hope and excitement generated, and thankful for a seven month- long excellent adventure.

The shock of losing, and losing so decisively, took several days to wear down. It may never wear off.

Epilogue

The day after the election, Harvey and I drove the main streets in Capital Ward and Pat and Mike headed off into Rideau-Vanier Ward to remove and the lawn signs from public property. It took us each three hours but we got all of the signs and stakes, we thought, bundled (all but a few for the memory box) and left them by the curb outside my house for the recycle truck to pick up. The following day Pat found six we had missed, and over the course of that week I found another three lying face down, one on a street and two on the grassy median beside intersections. I still automatically look for signs where we had posted them when driving down some streets. I do this not to see if we had missed any during clean up. It is an unextinguished campaign reflex; I am still looking to make sure they are proudly standing. And then I remember why I don’t see them.

Early in the campaign, Janet and Team Lorne decided that I was to wear business attire when campaigning because I looked better dressed that way. Some weeks after the election, a woman who had been present at the Hopewell all-candidates’ session came up to me at a press conference that was announcing medical grants and offered her advice, which went something like this: “I saw you on the panel. You were very good at answering questions, better than the other candidates. But you were dressed in a suit and tie and kept making notes with a Cross pen. All the other speakers dressed casually and used Bic pens so you may have lost the election because you weren’t connecting with the voters.” (For the record: None of my pens cost more than 39 cents.) My conclusions?

(1) You see what you want to see, and (2) Everyone is a critic.

Janet is not a morning person, and her regular attendance at our Team Lorne Monday morning meetings Chez Lorne demonstrated her devotion to the cause. With the election now over, the following Monday, Janet, Pat, Larry and I met for lunch at Summerhays in the west end to analyze the voting results poll by poll. Everyone had their theory about why we had lost. I had invited input from supporters and three sent me thoughtful statements. These we put aside until we had looked at the data.

Rob won every poll except for that one in a seniors’ residence I had visited, where I received 9 of the 10 votes cast. Most of his votes were, as expected in Capital Ward, where he got 4433 votes to my 2030. In Rideau-Vanier he had 1896 to my 778. We discussed campaign strategy, exchanged war stories, floated conspiracy theories but eventually agreed with what the voting results showed: Rob won; I came second. We agreed we had a strong campaign and a strong campaign team. We had done all we could. Several politician friends, observing what we were doing, agreed and said we were running a very professional campaign. We had nothing to regret.

I hosted Team Lorne the following Friday, November 12, for dinner at Mama Teresa’s. In attendance were Pat, Janet, Larry, Mike, Gail, and Norm. We reminisced in the glow of good food, wine, and good company. During the dinner, I described my recent meetings and phone calls with several re-elected and several defeated candidates. We had all expressed concern about the election results and what the new board would do, and pondered how we might monitor and influence the new board’s performance. No commitments were made. Time will tell.

We savored the moment at Mama Teresa’s and were the last to leave the restaurant. I was surprised and pleased when the Team members said they missed working together and we agreed to have breakfast together once a month. Who knows? We might even find a cause to support.

Our Analysis

These are my thoughts following the debriefing at Summerhays.

Research shows that, when an incumbent runs for municipal office in Ottawa, he or she is re-elected almost 90% of the time. My campaign was not the exception we had thought it would be. How had we misjudged so badly? Answers came in two categories:

(1) Rob won by popular support and the guidance of experienced campaign handlers;

(2) Rob messaged that my qualifications and experience were a bad thing, not a good thing, for a school trustee to have; and

(3) The ballot itself.

Rob’s Support and Campaign

I had assumed that I had name recognition equivalent to Rob’s as I had been a senior staff member, including CEO, of the local school district for a total of 20 years. While campaigning we discovered that I did have some recognition connecting me to the school board, and this recognition worked both ways. Some people thought I had been a trustee (generally a good thing, incumbents tend to be re-elected) and others were upset with one or more decisions made while I was on staff and blamed me. This was a bad thing. I think we fell into the trap of believing what we wanted to hear (good things about me and bad things about my opponents) and dismissing comments to the contrary.

Rob concentrated his resources and his money. His only paper publication was a pamphlet, he had few campaign ads and those he had were large and placed late in the campaign, and he had hundreds of campaign signs. He adopted black and yellow as his campaign colors. “School bus colors. Shows up better at night,” he told me. As cooler weather set in he began wearing a black turtle neck sweater under a yellow rain jacket. His campaign pamphlet was black print on yellow paper.

Rob had roots in the community and in the community associations. He was known by the eight school councils, which often comprised community opinion leaders and activists. In my opinion, he had not made any major errors during his four-year term, and he had a constant presence through monthly community paper columns. Although I had many campaign workers, and advice from former trustees, and although we did everything a good campaign does, most of my workers lived outside the zone. I did not have the grassroots support and political exposure in the zone that Rob did.

I am Accused of Knowing Too Much

We were sure that my credentials (40 years in public education as a teacher, principal and director of two school districts, three postgraduate degrees) and track record would convince voters that I was the best candidate. In fact, we emphasized this in my literature and in the canvassing. (“He is the only educator running for school trustee.”) The counter argument, which we dismissed, and which, in retrospect, seemed to have been effective, was that, because of this background, I would think I know everything and therefore would not listen to constituents. In addition, I would side with the staff recommendation when the constituents wanted something else.

The Ballot

Early in the campaign, someone named Daniel Rogers filed his nomination paper. He published no phone number or e-address, had no web site, did not turn up when his name was googled, did not appear at any meeting, did not distribute any campaign literature, could not be contacted by the organizations sending survey questionnaires to candidates, could not be contacted by the media, including community papers publishing candidate bios, platforms, and photos of candidates, and did not campaign in any other way. What he did do was take last place on the ballot away from me. With last place comes ‘blind’ votes, and this nomination ensured that they would not come to me. Daniel Rogers, the invisible candidate, got 688 (5.3%) of the votes cast. He got his deposit back.

Once Susan Miller declared as a candidate for city council and her name removed from the Zone 9 school trustee ballot, four men remained on the ballot. At the last moment just before the nominations closed, Helen Gruber filed her nomination paper. We had not heard of her in any school or school board context before then. She did attend the Hopewell trustee candidates’ meeting. She did tape her 90 second spot for Rogers Cable. As far as we could tell, that was all the campaigning Helen did. She did answer the questions from the Glebe Report (October 15 issue) but did not respond to any of the association surveys (OSSTF, ABC, etc.) that we assumed had gone to all of the candidates. She garnered 2215 votes to my 2808, most of them in Rideau-Vanier Ward. How could this be?

According to the information she submitted to the Glebe Report, she was the president of the Ottawa Film and Video Makers Society from 2004-2006 and president of the Toronto General Nurses of Ottawa Valley from 1995-2005. She stated she was active in her church. Although they published no information about her on their web-site and said they did not have her photo, the Campaign Life Coalition, an anti-abortion organization, deemed her “supportable” for the position of school trustee. They mentioned no other candidate.

We concluded that these two factors taken together, being known in her circles and being the only woman on the ballot, resulted in her receiving 17% of the votes. In a phone conversation two weeks after the election, I asked her why she had run. Her answer was, “I was always interested in schools and I saw the notice in the paper that the deadline for applying was 2 o’clock so I went to city hall and registered.” Remarkable!

Helen received 1132 votes to my 2030 in Capital Ward and, to my surprise, 1083 votes to my 778 in Rideau-Vanier! She obviously had a support base in Vanier. We had concentrated our resources in Capital Ward because we believed that was where Rob’s greatest strength was. We also believed that he was our only competition and assumed we had to give him a good run there if we were to win. We under-estimated Rideau-Vanier.

It is commonly believed that being first on a ballot gives a person a 10% edge in votes. Some say that being listed second has a smaller but distinct advantage. Also, having many names on a ballot supports re-election of an incumbent as the votes that are not for the incumbent are spread over more people, lessening the impact of any one of the challengers. Rob, the incumbent was first on the ballot. Where most trustee ballots have at most three names on them, ours had five, diluting the opposition vote. There was only one woman’s name on the ballot and she was listed second. Next time I run for public office I’m changing my name to Aaron Aardvark. Or perhaps to Abigail Aardvark.

I am proud that my campaign was ethical and transparent, that my platform was clear, thorough, and consistent, and that my campaign workers were personally loyal and hard-working.

Conclusions

Across the city, the turnout for the mayoral vote was only 44%, considerably down from 50% in the previous election in 2006. In Zone 9 (combination of two city wards), the turn out was 21,877 or 45.2%, a wee bit better than the overall city voter turnout. Our estimates of 50,000 voters, with 2/3 or 67% eligible to vote in my election were close. Of the 52,572 Zone 9 voters, 35,773 or 68% were English public school supporters and eligible to vote in the OCDSB election. We had also predicted that half of the people who turn out to vote cast a ballot for school trustee. Of these, 12,858 or 59% of those voting did vote for school trustee, a higher proportion than expected. (Looked at differently, 36.9% of potential voters in Zone 9 did vote for school trustee, higher than the typical 25% for a school trustee election.)

Rob won with 49.2% of the vote, winning every polling station except one. Rob was the only trustee elected without a majority of the votes cast, although 49.2% is pretty darn close. He had just over twice as many votes as I did in both wards. I could take some consolation in the fact that the voter turnout may have increased because of my candidacy and campaign, and that I did better in the two advanced polls than on voting day, suggesting that these conscientious voters made a reasoned choice in voting for me.

In retrospect, my winning this election was not to be. On the plus side, I have raised my political profile across the city (I don’t know what, if anything, I will do with that), Rob had to campaign to keep his seat. I am a lot more sympathetic to elected officials, and more knowledgeable about the election process.

On the negative side, sometimes getting elected is a crap shoot. I was discouraged by the large number of people who were ignorant about what school boards and school trustees do, a fair proportion of whom did not care what they did and did not care to become informed. Many of the people I heard from after the election admitted they had not made an informed voting choice based on campaign platforms or candidate qualifications and track record, but voted anyway, basing their choice on name recognition ( benefit of incumbency), position on the ballot, candidate’s gender, or ethnic origin of the candidate’s name.

If you assume that politicians don’t follow up on their campaign promises, then there is no point in researching their positions. In that case, any one of the ways I listed above for deciding which name to pick, including randomly, is as good as any other. And if voting doesn’t change anything, why bother voting?

What I Learned and What I Want to Change Because of It

The Ballot

Since there appears to be benefit to position on a ballot (first place is best, second not quite as good, last place not so good again, but it still has an edge over being in the middle), it seems reasonable to me that position on the ballot should be assigned in random, not alphabetical, order. For better candidate recognition (our brains are hard wired to remember faces but not names), consideration could be given to including a head shot of the candidate. This would require establishing a reasonable process to ensure that the photo is representative of the individual.

All-Candidates Meetings

The lack of all-candidates meetings for school trustees precludes reasoned debate over issues and promotes re-election of incumbents. If school board governance is to continue through popular election of members of the public, then the elections should be as open as and information as accessible as those of other municipal elections. I urge the provincial government and school boards to promote all-candidate meetings in every school board electoral zone.

School councils were established to improve student learning and are expected to be non-partisan. They should continue as such, but are well positioned to organize all-candidate meetings. They can work individually (as Hopewell did) or co-operatively, co-hosting and sharing the tasks with neighbouring school councils. The government should mandate them to host these meetings, but there should be no expense to the councils for doing so. Costs associated with use of meeting rooms, microphones, custodial help, and publicity should be assumed by the school board, which should remain at arms’ length from the meetings.

Final Word

Knowing what I know now, would I do it all over again? YES! It truly was an excellent adventure that lasted seven months. I had a steep and interesting learning curve, made new friends, and re-connected with many former colleagues. My understanding of the local political process was enhanced, my appreciation for hard-working school trustees grew, and my appreciation for the value of good leadership (communication, respect, motivation, organizing, research, etc.) was rekindled. I miss the excitement and the anticipation of the campaign, but I have resolved to work harder at maintaining personal contact with my friends, and to apply what I have learned and experienced to new ventures. The day after the election results were announced, the president of the board of governors of the liberal Jewish synagogue Temple Israel of Ottawa took me out for lunch. “I am resigning at the end of the month,” she said. “As first vice-president, you will assume the presidency for the twelve months remaining in my term.” Out of the frying pan and into the fire.