Nick Loughton is a 23-year-old law student at UVic. When the Victoria Green candidate gets all sciencey about the cancer research he did while an undergrad at the University of Calgary, he can make you feel like a parent faking understanding of your kid’s chemistry homework.
Harley Gordon? He’s 29, working on a PhD in forest biology, lives in Colwood with his wife and two dogs. Grew up in Oliver, but became smitten with the Island when he moved here for university. He’s running for the Greens in Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke.
Alana DeLong spent 14 years as an Alberta MLA, but the Vic High grad and Thetis Island resident doesn’t have that kind of profile in B.C., so Wednesday evening found the Conservatives’ nominee in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford pounding the pavement in the West Shore.
Welcome to Election 2021, where candidates with little name recognition have even less time than usual to raise their profiles and make you fall in love with them and their ideas. This 36-day campaign is the shortest the law allows. Think sprint, not marathon. Basically, this is the electoral equivalent of speed-dating. Not only that, but speed-dating with masks, Zoom and all the other pandemic buzzkills.
The challenge of becoming known is particularly tough for those running locally for the first time. Take the Liberals’ Sherri Moore-Arbour. She’s a relative newcomer to Galiano Island, the mother of two teens, Metis, the founder of a PR firm. She talks about her time with the Native Women’s Association of Canada and the B.C. School Trustees Association, and her belief in education as a lever for equity. She talks about being chair of Equal Voice, urging women of colour, and women in general, to run for office.
She talks passionately about a range of topics — but that won’t matter if voters don’t know her name, let alone what she believes in. And how do you get known when there are no big all-candidate meetings, and when COVID-wary voters might not be thrilled about opening their doors to door-knocking strangers? It’s tough enough that Moore-Arbour is running against Elizabeth May in Saanich-Gulf Islands, which, for the past decade, has been like running against the Sedins in Vancouver.
“There is no doubt that the electoral conditions in this riding are squarely uphill,” Moore-Arbour says. She vows to do her best to make herself known. “As long as it is safe to be meeting people outdoors, we’ll be meeting people.”
That matters. YouTube might be useful, but there’s nothing like an in-person exchange for people to get a read on one another. Door-knocking is effective (though Elections Canada suggests modifications this year: masks, two-metre distancing, avoid shaking hands, keep records of who went where).
“People tend to be really honest at their doors,” says DeLong. “They say what they really think.” If Twitter is where voters exchange fire from entrenched positions, the front porch is where they keep an open mind. A veteran campaigner, DeLong usually buys a new pair of running shoes before each election. She began going house-to-house well before the writ dropped.
DeLong is one of seven challengers in the Island’s seven ridings who are returnees from the 2019 campaign. The others are Blair Herbert, her Liberal opponent in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, Liberal Michelle Corfield in Nanaimo, New Democrat Sabina Singh and Conservative David Busch in Saanich-Gulf Islands, Conservative Shelley Downey in North Island-Powell River and Liberal Nikki Macdonald in Victoria. Like DeLong, Macdonald began knocking on doors as soon as Dr. Bonnie said it was OK; she figured she was over 2,000 by the time the campaign began.
Others were ready to go, too. As soon as the election was called, the Pat Bay Highway sprouted seven big billboards bearing Singh’s image. She’s knocking on doors, too. Still, this is a different kind of election. Like several other candidates, the combination of COVID protocols and the brevity of the campaign means Singh won’t bother opening a traditional campaign office. Instead, she’ll putt-putt around the riding in a Westfalia microbus, pulling out tables and chairs at stops.
As for those first-time candidates starting from square one? Gordon says he has a pretty healthy online presence. Ditto for Loughton. “I’m a young guy, I’m on social media,” the latter says. Plus, he adds, he has the energy to get out in public a lot.
Better get moving. Election day is a month tomorrow.
jknox@timescolonist.com
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