You may have noticed that the municipal election were heading into is significantly different. Two things come to my mind: This is the first time in a dozen years an incumbent is running for mayor. The last one was Phillip Owen in 1999. This is also the first election in this neck of the woods where social media is playing a major role.
Both of these facts are affecting how the parties set their course.
Mayor Gregor Robertson has all the advantages of an incumbent, including name recognition, access to funds and a well-oiled machine.
All of that makes the oppositions (read the NPAs Suzanne Anton) job harder. What makes it easier, though, is that Anton has an opponent with a track record.
As was inevitable after three years in office, and in spite of being bubble wrapped by his staff, Robertson has managed to tick more than a few people off. That leaves Anton with a buffet of issues to choose from; everything from a failure to consult on homeless shelters and bike lanes, to hiring city manager Penny Ballem and making huge chunks of city staff miserable while severely limiting media access to bureaucrats and, well, if it does have any traction, the Stanley Cup riot. In these circumstances, Robertsons crowd will put the best spin they can on his record. Antons crew will ultimately continue to go negative knowing full well that governments are defeated as opposed to oppositions being elected.
Yet even though its been some time since weve had this kind of contest, its not new.
What is new is the use and impact of social media tools and other related technology. Two of themTwitter, which produces tweets, was invented in 2006 and Facebook, which has been around since 2004were considered crucial to Barack Obamas successful run for the American presidency.
Now every political campaign from the Arab Spring to the folks occupying Wall Street are using them.
My buddy Frances Bula has been commenting on Vision Vancouver tweets. The 140 character instant messages fired off by the cellphone crowd are now flooding local cyberspace thanks to the NPA, COPE and Vision. Bula commented on these messages on her blog.
In the last municipal election, Bula wasnt blogging and the political parties werent tweeting. Or if they were, it was a minor activity.
In fact, blogging came into its own as a political factor here after Sam Sullivan was shown the door and Peter Ladner, the guy who beat him out for the NPA nomination, was defeated. It was then that two of Sullivans staffers made it their mission in life to plague Robertson and Vision. One of them even used the notoriety he achieved as a blogger to launch his own political career.
The tweets Bula was posting on her blog are now watched by most journalists covering politics, such as herself, and are inevitably driving the main stream media (MSM in social media speak) agenda.
But the parties are also using social media to connect with their supporters, to rally volunteers and identify voters.
There is one other new piece of technological wizardry being used that we didnt see last time outthe telephone town hall. Its a way for a politician to connect with tens of thousands of voters without providing a venue. Its much easier and cheaper than renting a hall and asking people to leave the comfort of their homes. All you need is a phone and you can listen in, possibly ask a question and, more importantly from the political partys point of view, be polled on questions about the campaign: If you are in favour of more bike lanes press one on your keypad.
There is still the question as to whether this new fangled stuff gets more supporters to the polls. What is clear, however, is this: if your opponents are doing it, you will be too. And that is as it has always been.
