The B.C. Liberals got a vital warning from a political celebrity last fall about how to run their campaign.
It looks as if the messenger was so engaging, no one paid attention to the message.
Jim Messina, boss of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s successful 2012 re-election, warned the Liberal convention that if they tried to run the same campaign as the last one, they would lose.
They didn’t quite lose. But even if they eventually top out with a scant majority, the three-point drop in their popular vote share and the loss of a handful of seats represents a stall-out. They’re technical winners at this point. But they’re the only party that didn’t improve, compared to last time. So despite the confidence Premier Christy Clark projected Wednesday, they look like the losers.
Running a 2017 campaign that was word-for-word and image-for-image a direct knock-off of the 2013 campaign — against Messina’s advice — might have contributed to the slump they experienced Tuesday.
Messina parlayed that 2012 gig into a flourishing career, including as a top-dollar speaker. He was hired at some expense to address 1,000 party members last November and get them pumped up for the election.
One of his key points came in the form of an amusing anecdote. He was a White House staff member summoned by Obama to Hawaii. They were in the surf when Obama fired him — then asked him to be campaign director.
The kicker to the story was his response. He told the president he’d take the job, but warned if they tried to repeat the theme of 2008, Obama was going to lose.
At other places on the speaking circuit, Messina has told crowds: “I studied every campaign for the last 60 years, and the ones that tried to run a re-elect like the first one ended up losing. … If we’d just slapped ‘Hope’ on a bumper sticker [in 2012], it wouldn’t have worked.”
The party soaked up his other messages. But the warning against trying the same thing twice went right over their heads. Clark wore the same hard hats as in 2013, the same safety vests, used the same collection of working stiffs as backdrops at many stops and dwelled on the same “jobs, jobs, jobs” message.
It worked so brilliantly last time, it was probably impossible to resist the encore presentation.
But it fell short. People had heard it all before. Her government has presided over prosperous times, no doubt. She delivered five balanced budgets. B.C. boasts the best employment rate and economic performance in Canada. Victoria has had the lowest unemployment rate of any city in the country or close to it since the middle of last year. There isn’t a jurisdiction in North America that’s doing better.
All those facts do now, though, is intensify the question about why the Liberals lost their secure majority.
How could they possibly come up short with a record like that?
It’s partly because people grew wary of Clark over the past four years. So when she started up again with the old theme, it didn’t go as far as it once did.
Meanwhile, NDP Leader John Horgan hammered on her for failing on assorted fronts, most importantly on integrity issues. For all the criticism about ignoring big chunks of B.C., Horgan went where he had the best shot, and gathered up more seats. Increasing the seat count with almost the same share of the vote as last time in the face of new Green contenders indicates how adept the NDP campaign was.
For all the indecision at present, if elections decide who’s in power, then Tuesday produced a clear winner. Even if the Liberals scrape into scant majority territory in two weeks, Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver has a lot more clout than he did going in. And if the minority situation holds, the new three-seat Green caucus is the most powerful entity in B.C.
The Liberal slate of “Island Champions” managed to win one seat, maybe two, out of 14.
With three Green Party Island MLAs potentially on the brink of deciding the future of B.C., there’s not much doubt who the real champions of this contest were.
