Tweeting Your Campaign

I've had a few thoughts as we get into Municipal silly season. David Plouffe’s book about Obama’s campaign has recently hit the shelves (I must get it as soon as possible as any campaign addict must.) President Obama’s campaign famously used social media, e-mails and text messages to motivate volunteers and ultimately to win the Presidency. However, from most of the news I recall seeing right after the 2008 Presidential election, one might not want to believe all the hype.

It’s certain that the Obama campaign used social media to energize volunteers and to coordinate the message. However polls appear to reveal when it came to Election Day many of the same voters came out as in previous elections. There was no mass movement of youth to the polls. Swing voters, tired of 8 years of Republican complacency, a drawn-out War on Terror and the lies that motivated it, apathy about John McCain and rejection of Sarah Palin by mainstream America are what in the end, gave Obama the victory. Many have said that a turnip could have won the election as the Democratic Candidate.

However, this is not to dismiss the role of social media in spreading the message of hope that accompanied President Obama’s campaign. Youth were clearly motivated to knock on doors. A cynical American public, disenfranchised from a government whose approval ratings are awful, often refuse to listen to those with the hope of youth in their eyes. However Obama may have over-reached in many of his concrete proposals for reform, of health care, of the tax-code, of the military’s don’t ask don’t tell policy, of the kind of capitalism that has created the largest economic divide since the Gilded Age, the campaign certainly used new media to get their message out.

Texts and e-mails sent from the campaign, many of which I received having signed up for them, constantly encouraged young Americans to take their country back. But there was also an important distinction that candidates and their campaign managers are wise to regard.

A tweet is a 140-character message broadcast to those that are following you. The Tweeting public, while large and growing, is clearly not the majority of people, nor the majority of motivated voters. That’s important to remember. It’s also important to note that most of the tweets from the Obama campaign, as well as the e-mails, led the recipient to a website with concrete policy positions spelled out in a fair degree of detail.

Looking at Toronto’s early municipal election campaign we can note a couple of divergent uses. While it’s early on, there are a number of early favoured candidates. Each have their own style and it’s interesting to note the differences.

Rocco Rossi appears to get it. George Smitherman is taking some time to eek out his positions but is certainly keeping us in the loop as to his daily activities. That’s good too. I feel for Sarah Thomson, who so far is the sole female candidate to have declared to run for Mayor. However, I have some criticism of her early tweeting. I’d include Stephen Feek but he appears unprepared; earlier this week he posted a link to his Twitter account where he announced that his campaign would start on February 1st. In Tweetspeak; Fail. Not a FTW (For the Win) move for someone with no name recognition. Candidates should be prepared to come out of the gate running the minute they announce they are running for Mayor, particularly those candidates that will not get mainstream coverage easily.

Giorgio Mammoliti has gotten some good press so far but that comes easily to a sitting City Councillor with a record of having lots to say, good or bad. His online profile is non-existent.

There are likely to be others. Other would-be candidates are either continuing a well-run and deep understanding of Twitter and Facebook – Adam Giambrone comes to mind here as a Councillor that has been using both mediums to his advantage for some time. I’d love to go on but to date that’s the limit of candidates using Twitter.

Speculation has it that Joe Pantalone and perhaps Shelley Carroll. Carroll is a sporadic Twitter user at best and while I love her as a person, she faces a tough challenge as Mayor Miller’s Budget Chief.

We have lots of talk so far about who will run and who won’t and only 11 declared candidates. That number will surely swell to 30-odd by September.

In such a wide-open race, which the media almost always narrows down to 2 front-runners, plus 3 second-tier candidates and 30-odd also-rans, the use of social media can be a powerful tool. But it also has its downfalls and shortcomings.

First, the 140-character message is much too short for anything other than bluster and rhetoric. If voters, even savvy online followers can’t dig deeper, the use of social media, in my opinion, can turn voters and potential advocates (Re-Tweeters) off.

Let’s first take the example of Sarah Thomson. Something tells me I may be discussing her campaign to a fairly high degree over the next few months. So let’s get one thing out of the way. I support more female representation in politics. However, just as no ‘gay’ candidate should be considered only on that basis, a woman candidate ought not to be considered simply because she is a female candidate. I think that’s playing a gender card that’s undeserved.

Today, one of her Tweets infuriated me to a degree. It said: “Reading city budget reports, blood boiling over the waste and audacity of our bureaucrats.” For a number of reasons I take issue with this Tweet.

First, there was no link to anything beyond that simple message. There was no link to the Budget report she was reading (they’re all available online.) Without any kind of context, the reader is supposed to just take at face value that there are reasons to be angry, that bureaucrats are audacious and waste taxpayer money. That’s easy enough to believe but is it true? No one likes taxes and everyone hates government waste and many assume that most tax dollars are wasted because there have been stories in the past about cases of waste. However, there have also been studies that show the City of Toronto is actually very efficiently run and simply faces a structural deficit.

So, this message is in essence an attempt to say – I’m angry as hell and I’m not going to take it any more. Why we’re supposed to be angry is not important, we just should be. Had there been some explanation of why Mrs. Thomson is angry, the rational reader might say, yes, you’ve uncovered some waste and audacity and I damn well agree with you. Instead, we’re left with populist rhetoric.

Mrs. Thomson doesn’t yet have a website – outside of her Woman’s Post blog (I’ll get to that in a minute) so there is no deeper explanation available. Is it waste because of unnecessary spending? Overstaffing? Inappropriate programming? Why? What is the waste? Is this a provincially mandated program or is it a discretionary program (the vast majority of City programs are provincially mandated.) If I don’t understand the underlying reasons why Ms. Thomson believes its waste or what in fact she believes at all. Where do you want to take our City? (I say our because other than the last 4 months, Toronto has been my home since 1998.)

I have not decided yet whom I will vote for but this kind of rhetoric turns me off. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Rob Ford constantly complains about City waste but rarely identifies any of it at Budget time.

If I look at Rocco Rossi’s use of Twitter and Facebook, I at least get a sense of where he’s heading. Rocco includes links to larger articles, asks readers to give feedback on his positions and has already put forward some concrete proposals.

Smitherman hasn’t said much of a concrete nature but I also know that he worked for Barbara Hall when she was Mayor of Toronto. I know he was frustrated during last year’s Municipal workers strike and organized litter clean-up events. He’s held office in Dalton McGuinty’s government and yes, he must dig out from under the eHealth scandal and shed the image of ‘Furious George.’ I’ve met George and he’s a nice guy. But he also gets stuff done and is the kind of personality needed for a Mayoral office in Toronto.

Similarly, Adam Giambrone is using Twitter and Facebook very well. We’ve always known where he is/was and he constantly posts about policy issues. While it tends to be light, his use of both mediums has always been democratic and open – lots of debate and even insults which are rarely removed. If you’re asking for openness and transparency, Adam pretty much puts it out there with his online presence.

I said I’d get back to Thomson’s use of her Woman’s Post page. My concern is that this corporate site is financially supported by Woman’s Post that Thomson (of that Thompson, the rich family) owns. As such, its use to promote her campaign amounts to a contravention of City Council’s ban on corporate donations to candidates. I believe this is a pretty clear, cut-and-dry case. There’s no mistaking it really – she has already suggested that people visit her site from her ThomsonforMayor Twitter account.

To be clear, I’d have the same issue if John Tory were running and using his radio talk show to promote his campaign. It’s wrong.

As a media outlet, I also worry that it serves as a sort of clearinghouse for information about her campaign. Another Twitter user has been promoting Thompson’s campaign during office hours. While the Account holder states she is independent, her website/office/media company is located in the offices of Woman’s Post. All of this gives one the feeling that corporate entities are having an influence on Mrs. Thompson’s campaign.

Epilogue

Since I wrote the above piece I’ve had a few thoughts and there have been a few developments. I also had an extended argument – I won’t call it debate or discussion since it wasn’t really – on Twitter.

First, the argument; I made the mistake of Tweeting that having met George Smitherman and finding him very pleasant, I didn’t understand the furious moniker but ‘isn’t it appropriate to be angry with bureaucrats.’ Perhaps I missed a story along the way but I think the Furious George is a result of great political messaging and branding by the Ontario Tories and that’s unfortunate – both for George and for the public debate about Toronto’s future. Rather than discussing the merits of his potential Mayoralty (and so far, there’s been scant detail from George) people are discussing a personality trait. We’re told its Mr. Happy versus Mr. Angry (Rossi.)

The argument consisted of the person I was arguing with setting up straw dogs. Rage isn’t appropriate – I never actually said anything about rage. I said he was a nice guy. I asked whether anger wasn’t appropriate. Some Torontonians are quite angry about how the City is being run. And remember I said bureaucrats. The person then introduced working with others. Bureaucrats must take direction from politicians – that’s fundamental to democracy. So while I agree that it’s important to be civil, anger can appropriately be expressed at bureaucrats, particularly when an elderly Toronto Community Housing resident is evicted then dies of an infection, for instance.

When people normally cite that it’s important to work with others and build consensus, they are generally referring to relations with other politicians. Having worked at City Hall and having seen many City Councillors in various situations, there are some instances that would make any rational person angry – stupid things said, mischaracterizations, abuse of City Staff, suggestions of impossible policy etc. I’m thinking of Francis Nunziata as an example. Politics creates winners and losers and it is naïve to suggest that a non-partisan approach can always be successful. The US Health Care debacle is an example. Sometimes you have to play hardball just to get a middle-of-the-road compromise achieved.

The Mega-City has created such a dysfunctional City that often compromise on friendly terms is simply unachievable. Policies favouring a dense urban core that allows for sustainable active transportation for instance, including bike lanes is heresy for some suburban Councillors whose residents are largely car dependent. Tax policies favouring efficient use of properties over ones that favour location will enrage some citizens and as a result, their representatives. That’s politics. By definition it is the struggle for power and hence, it involves a lot of passion.

The Straw Dog here was that the Mega-City should be separated. That’s not something I’d necessarily argue for but it comes with intrinsic political problems, just as Canadian federalism does with huge differences in interest between the Oil Patch and downtown Toronto. You must therefore accept that there will be some dysfunction on Council. I’d suggest that those who do not understand this either tour the Mega-City or spend a day speaking with people from different parts of the City. I asked the arguer what experience he had at City Hall – not as a put-down (which he took it to be) but to assess his level of understanding of the level and cause of the dysfunction.

For the record, City Hall has a Code of Conduct for the Mayor and Members of City Council. Staff must be treated professionally and cannot be threatened with job loss. However, there is no shortage (I believe the number was 19) of former high-ranking bureaucrats who have been fired or driven out due to philosophical differences with Mayor Miller. It is not appropriate to ‘rage’ but the expression of anger is totally appropriate in some circumstances.

He insulted me – saying that any ‘management trainee’ knows this. I said it was City Hall and not The Gap. I guess I touched a sensitive nerve there as he took that personally but my point was simply that we are dealing in some cases with lives, in all cases with Taxpayer money (which is limited) and not simply how a shirt has been folded. I don’t know the individual or where he works but insulting him was not my intention. You cannot tell me that people don’t get ‘called on the carpet’ at the highest level of a multi-billion dollar private sector corporation.

Enough with that argument.

Now. Back to Twitter. A new group has formed called @voteTO based on the discussions on Twitter. A question was posed as to whether or not such a group can change an election. I do not believe so. I posted on Facebook that it takes offline political action to reach the vast majority of people not on Twitter and that those people on Social Media generally share a point of view. In the end, people will vote based on their beliefs as to how the City of Toronto should be run. Given the way my argument unfolded above, I further doubt that this group will have much success, unless it gets actively involved in campaigns and in spreading its messages to the broader community. But I love being proven wrong.

There seems to me to be a growing number of people don't believe that people are fully entitled to their own views and opinions about how a City or government should be run. I find it generally to be left-minded people that are in this group though those on the extreme right can be equally dismissive. However, this group is young, urban, hip and socially conscious. They may very well be right. However, unless they actually get out and knock on doors, employ traditional campaign methods, they are unlikely to achieve widespread success - but that's just my opinion (validated by former Trudeau Staffer Patrick Gossage.)