KENORA – The Conservative Party’s candidate for Kenora-Kiiwetinoong in this spring’s federal election went through the 36-day campaign period without speaking to reporters. So did the PC candidate for Kenora-Rainy River in the Feb. 27 Ontario election.
Is this good strategy? Political strategist Jamie Ellerton gives it a mixed review.
“I think it’s a limiting strategy, if you take a step back and look at how a campaign is run,” he says from Toronto, where he’s founder and principal of the public affairs consulting firm Conaptus.
Campaigns of all political stripes have been known to limit candidates’ interaction with journalists as a strategy to “control the message,” he says.
And Ellerton says the strategy can work, until it doesn’t.
“When it starts to become a story that they’re avoiding media and avoiding engaging with the public, those kinds of things are obviously unhelpful for an image in terms of how the campaign is trying to present itself.
“So I do think there are very significant limitations to a strategy of non-engagement with the media.”
Campaigns hope that less interaction with news media means less straying “from the issues that you would rather be talking about,” says Ellerton, who did not consult for any campaigns in this year’s federal and Ontario elections.
That approach worked for the federal Conservatives in reinforcing their appeal to voters who liked the party before the election was called, he says, but “it had real shortcomings in reaching other voters.”
As he puts it, “if you’re only preaching to the choir, it’s hard to grow your base.”
Iain Angus has been a successful candidate at the federal, provincial and municipal levels – for federal and provincial parliament as a New Democrat, and for Thunder Bay city council.
He agrees that shunning the news media can have drawbacks for a campaign, but says it didn’t seem to hurt the federal Conservatives.
The Tories did not win government, Angus says, but “they gained 20 seats and it obviously didn’t hurt them in their ridings.”
“But I think it hurts in two ways,” he adds
“One, it undermines the credibility of their candidates, whether they win or not, as being aloof, unwilling to be challenged in public.
“It also undermines democracy,” he says.
“I noticed this time around there were no all-candidates debates, because the usual groups that organized them saw the writing on the wall, knew that they wouldn’t have one of the major contenders, and felt that it was inappropriate – and I’m guessing here – to provide a platform for the other candidates, creating an imbalance.
“So, I think we all lose because of it.
“And I feel for the Conservative candidates. You know, a lot of them had solid reputations in their own ridings.
“Those who already held elected office had a reputation for being transparent, for being visible, for not hiding.
“And then all of a sudden they’re forced by the centre to keep their mouths shut and be invisible. I don’t think any of us win because of that.”
Election campaign practices have evolved, says Ellerton.
“Increasingly you see candidates less and less willing to talk to media, (trying to) maintain more control over the message and more control and influence over the conversation.
“There’s kind of an adage of ‘you can’t quote them on what they don’t say,’ and so if you’re not engaging with media … there is, you could argue, some upside to having a more focused strategy on that.
“But where it crosses from potentially managing risk to something that then becomes the story itself and tracks from the campaign, is when you’re so insular to the point that you’re not communicating with others pretty much at all,” he says.
“You kind of start to live in your own echo chamber and you don’t have the ability to persuade your constituents that you could indeed be an elected official that stands up for the entire community.
“Any time there would be an interview request, there would both be a risk and a reward prospect to engaging with the media.
“You engage with requests on a case-by-case basis, but I think … if you’re always saying no and you’re never engaging, it’s a very limiting strategy.”
Conservative Kenora-Kiiwetinoong MP Eric Melillo was re-elected to a third term in the April 28 federal election with nearly 50 per cent of votes cast. Progressive Conservative Greg Rickford won a third term in the Ontario legislature on Feb. 27 with nearly 60 per cent in Kenora-Rainy River.
Newswatch reached out to Melillo’s and Rickford’s offices for interviews, but they were not made available.
