Читать книгу Let ’Em Howl - Patricia Sorbara - Страница 9

“Luck means the hardships you have not hesitated to endure; the long nights you have devoted to your work. Luck means the appointments you have never failed to keep, the airplanes you never failed to catch.”

– Margaret Clement

I had many role models during my many years working at Queen’s Park but four women in particular had formidable impact on me and remain in my life to this day.

Heather Peterson was the only senior woman on staff with David Peterson. I turned to her often for advice and she’d help me work through the disappointments and keep going. I was in awe of this capable woman who understood her mandate to diversify the people who work in politics and executed this endgame against significant odds.

Kathy Robinson is the most disciplined and organized person I’ve likely ever known. We were Liberals together in the 1980s, and I reported to her when she was campaign chair in 1990. There was never any question who held the authority or how decisions were to be made. I turned to her often throughout my life when trouble loomed.

Deb Matthews—whom I admired from afar when she co-chaired the 1987 Peterson campaign—and I got to know each other best in the 1992 leadership contest when we both supported Lyn McLeod. Deb’s strength was understanding the big picture and building teams. She had a firm but kind guiding hand and never hesitated to speak out when she saw issues and problems.

Terrie O’Leary was a senior organizer in the 1990 Paul Martin federal leadership campaign (later becoming his chief of staff when he was appointed minister of finance). No matter when you phoned the office, Terrie was reachable. She was the only woman who could keep the men running that campaign under control. I remember wanting to be like Terrie, working day and night if that’s what it took.

These were fearless, determined women who got results. I was lucky to have such amazing role models who had a direct impact on me. I learned the value of being mentored and tried to emulate them when people turned to me for support.

Lesson: Working in politics is a wildcard. Be prepared to love it or leave it.

Politics is a blood sport and it either chews you up and spits you out or it hooks you. And once hooked, there’s no middle ground. It’s likely to be the most exhilarating experience of your career. I truly believe there is no life like it. As much as possible, people looking to work as political staff should understand what the position entails before they take the job. A big part of it is knowing how the role is meant to work with that of the civil servant, a party representative and an elected politician. Political staff work to balance the competing needs and beliefs of each group and often play the role of mediator. The ability to search for a compromise is essential.

At the federal and provincial levels, if you work for a politician, you work for a political party. That reality can cause confusion at times. If you take a role in politics that is paid by government, including one in a legislative assembly, you will have a political role as well as a government/legislative role. Our system is based on electing a political party and as such, elected officials have political obligations. Political staff are the ones who make sure those obligations are considered and, where possible, realized.

Among the most critical things political staff must understand is the role of civil servant who serves the government in power. Their primary responsibility is to provide politicians with their absolute best advice based on many factors including experience, research, historical context, societal impacts and financial considerations. The best advice always includes options, delineating the pros and cons of each proposal. Politicians tend to be more suspect when the civil service puts before them a single choice. As a chief of staff to a minister, I regularly sent back briefing notes or proposals because they were too narrow in scope.

One of my favourite encounters of this nature happened when I was chief of staff to Ken Black, minister of tourism and recreation. Fairly close to the 1990 election, I took a direct call from the minister of finance, Robert Nixon, who gave me clear marching orders. I was to oversee a process to ensure a significant sum of money was quickly distributed across the province. I knew from my political work we were moving toward an early election call and I understood the urgency.

I asked the deputy minister, Blair Tully, for a list of project recommendations from ministry staff. I told him the amount but asked for options to allow me to make choices. He had been around long enough to know my intent was to apply a political lens to the decisions. I had the list within a few days; it was more than one hundred pages in length. Each project was priced individually but there was no total. I decided to add up the amount of the projects listed. It was for the exact amount of money available for distribution—meaning there were no decisions for me to make. More than annoyed, I returned to the deputy’s office to make the point that I had asked for a list of options but instead got only the ministry’s picks.

The deputy turned to the assistant deputy minister responsible for the list and with a chuckle said, “See? I told you she wouldn’t fall for it.” He reached across his desk and handed me a second list—one with plenty of choices. Part of me knew I should be mad at the ministry’s attempt to control the outcome, but I actually just thought it was ballsy—and clearly I had a passed a test.

Lesson: Sometimes the toughest environments are where you learn the most, but be prepared to accept your limits.

In 1990, eight years into my career, I signed up to support Paul Martin in his run for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada at the leadership convention held on June 23. I learned an immense amount during that race, and it set me up to be a lead organizer for the Lyn McLeod leadership campaign in 1991–92. The Martin leadership was an uphill battle and I gained direct experience with hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. The effort to win delegates against Jean Chrétien’s formidable forces was like nothing I’d ever witnessed before.

It was during that campaign that I came to realize what it meant to challenge demanding, angry men who were set on having it their own way. You took their direction or you were slapped down. It was high risk to disagree with them, but my own Italian temper and sense of right and wrong put me in the crosshairs more often than was healthy. I was called “bitch” and “fucking dyke,” told to shut up and ordered to do what I was told. I was laughed at and mocked. Through the frustration and tears I continued, unwilling to give in. But I came close to leaving a number of times.

I worked full-out and I got results, using my personal political network to win Martin delegates in ridings where it was not expected. I was earning respect, and I wanted to prove I had what it takes to operate in the trenches at that level. And I wanted Paul Martin to be prime minister.

Besides learning how to win on the front line, that campaign influenced my view of how important it was to be honest with the ground troops. Perhaps the best example was the day of the leadership vote. While we awaited the results of the first (and it turns out, only) ballot, senior organizer John Webster was speaking directly to organizers on the floor through our radios. He kept saying we had the momentum going into the second ballot and to be sure our delegates did not leave early. As I looked around the floor, it was clear we had lost. The party was organizing a row of people (called a “love tunnel,” in tour terms) to guide the new leader to the stage. When I told John that over the radio, he told me to shut up and let him provide the direction. It always stayed with me that a senior organizer would expect us to ignore what we were seeing with our own eyes.

Lesson: Politics will always be there. You will be better at it if you get some experience outside of the bubble of government or partisan politics. You can come and go as opportunities are presented, but it’s good to have a fallback. The instability of politics is best offset by knowing why you are there.

By some point in my early 30s, the word “hack” had begun to make its way into my subconscious, given that I’d done nothing other than politics in my career. At the same time, the all-encompassing nature of politics was taking its toll. I’d be at work no later than seven thirty every morning and I’d work all day, balancing my government day job with my political work. I rarely left before seven thirty at night and dedicated all or part of most weekends to politics. Eventually I decided a career was important to me, and the sensible thing was to make sure I had a fallback should the Liberals not win re-election.

At the time I was working with Bob Wong and he suggested I go back to school. Despite all my experience as a manager, it remains true to this day that it’s tough to explain to people the skills you gain as a political staff person. With Bob’s encouragement, I decided to start my MBA part-time at York University. It was demanding and difficult to balance everything but by the time we lost government in 1990, I had five courses under my belt. It was a good thing, because it opened the door to an option I likely would not have had, which was to attend Queen’s University on a full-time basis and finish my MBA. I left the bubble at the end of September 1990 and spent the next few years applying all I learned in politics to life “in the real world.”

My departure occurred following the defeat of the majority Liberal government of David Peterson, when we fell to Bob Rae and the NDP on September 6, 1990. It was an unexpected outcome that resulted in the only NDP government in Ontario’s history, and a majority at that. David Peterson lost his home riding of London Centre to the NDP and resigned as leader that very night.

In the pre-writ and during the campaign, I worked in the central campaign as an assistant to Kathy Robinson, who was campaign chair. At her insistence I also managed the riding services package, which produced election campaign materials—signs, pamphlets and issues cards—for ridings, in an efficient and cost-effective manner. It was a lot of administrative work, but it was important.

Local campaigns always sense the ground shift ahead of the central campaign. We knew we were in trouble when ridings started to refuse material with David Peterson’s photo on it, which was pretty much every piece of literature. We literally forced candidates to accept them, but there were a lot of unhappy campaigns out there when boxes and boxes of unwanted paper landed on their doorsteps.

David Peterson’s sudden resignation meant the immediate trigger of the race, on an informal basis, to replace him as leader of the Ontario Liberal Party (among other reasons, having just become the official opposition, the party needed someone to act as the leader in the legislature). Since being even interim leader ensures a profile and access to resources not available to the other leadership candidates, the party and caucus insisted that the interim leader agree to not run for the permanent position. The very experienced Robert Nixon was chosen to fill the role, but he resigned that summer to take an appointment from the federal Conservative government. Following Nixon’s departure, Murray Elston, a senior MPP from southwestern Ontario, was chosen to take on the interim leader responsibilities on the clear and explicit condition that he was not going to throw his hat in the ring.

It was not too long after Elston’s appointment that Lyn McLeod, an MPP from Thunder Bay and former cabinet minister, announced her decision to seek the leadership. Following a call from her former chief of staff and campaign chair Bob Richardson, I met with Lyn and she asked me to join the effort. I was on my way to Queen’s to finish my MBA, but I said yes. I did not know Lyn well at the time, but I knew this—if she were elected leader, Lyn would be the first woman to helm one of the three mainstream political parties in Ontario.

That mission called to me. I had been long involved in recruiting women to run for political office—and in general, getting more women to take on higher profile roles in politics, as campaign managers or presidents of local riding associations. A woman being elected leader of the Ontario Liberal Party would put a pretty major crack in that thick glass ceiling. But as the campaign ramped up, I couldn’t actually contribute that much; the effort was being run out of Toronto and I was at university more than two hours away. Although it was killing me, I convinced myself I had to stay in Kingston and focus on grad school.

Lesson: Sometimes you just have to drop the gloves and fight for what you believe in, especially if it means advancement for a woman.

All that changed when Murray Elston announced he was running, breaking his commitment to stay out of the race when he was appointed interim leader. His stated reason was that he could not leave the leadership to such a weak field. That blatant arrogance and the broken commitment made me angry, but I still managed to keep my focus on my academics. After all, I had three semesters left to finish the MBA and return to the workforce. Surely to God I could stay away from politics for that long.

Wrong. I remember the phone ringing like it was yesterday. It was the landline at the place I had rented in Kingston (it would be years before cellphones became commonplace). It was late in the day and I was head down, working on a presentation due the next morning. For some reason I answered the phone. On the other end of the line was my friend Dave Gene, an experienced organizer and political staffer. He was a streetfighter who learned from some of the best in his home community of Windsor. Like me, he was a lifelong operative and proud of it.

Dave’s opening comment was along the lines of, “Well, your candidate should just drop out now.” When I asked why, given that Lyn was the frontrunner, Dave laughed. He stated that with Murray Elston now in the race, it was over. The province wasn’t ready to elect a woman, he said, and Elston would win in a landslide. I remember having to firmly hold onto the phone, as my rage at the audacity and presumptuousness of his statement had caused my hands to shake. I pulled it together long enough to provide a generalized response through gritted teeth, along the lines of, “We’ll see about that.” I thanked him for the call and hung up.

I would later joke that Lyn should send Dave a thank you note for making that call. Overnight my priorities shifted. I was not about to let the first woman positioned to succeed in a leadership race be waved aside because a middle-aged Caucasian male from southwestern Ontario had broken his word and entered the race at the last minute. What’s worse, he and his supporters had the nerve to believe he could win without a fight.

Refocusing my attention on Lyn’s campaign meant I had to find a way to spend as much time in Toronto as I could. Scott Reid, a Young Liberal from Brockville whom I had worked with during the 1990 Paul Martin leadership, was doing his undergraduate degree at Queen’s at the time and he was supporting Lyn. I approached Scott with my dilemma, and he was all in. He and I would drive into Toronto late Friday night or early on Saturday morning, returning late Sunday night. I worked full-out all weekend at my desk in the campaign office. When I could take a break from the campaign, or if I had an assignment due Monday, I did my homework at that same desk. Folks would often comment about the pile of books surrounding me (stacks of tomes in the areas of finance, statistics, international relations) as I barked out orders for the campaign. More than once during that leadership race, I silently thanked my large Italian family who had taught me the very valuable skill of holding two or three conversations at the same time.

Christmas break came, and I headed home as early as possible to aid in the race. Mark Munro, one of the young men working on the campaign, had worked with me when I was chief of staff to Ken Black at Tourism and Recreation, and he was well aware of my management style. He issued a memo to campaign staff joking that Christmas had been cancelled: Pat was coming home and there was work to do. While mostly a joke, with the delegate selection meetings taking place in mid-January and the convention happening February 7 to 9, 1992, in Hamilton, there was no time to lose. The office stayed open right through the Christmas break and anyone able to work on the campaign did so. (It also meant that I saw my family only briefly on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.)

At the end of the delegate selection meetings in mid-January, I gave Lyn a quick briefing about how the weekend had gone. In the middle of the discussion I noticed her getting a bit emotional. I realized she was quite relieved and surprised by how well we had done. It became clear to me that Lyn had prepared for the worst. I felt bad that I hadn’t ever briefed her on our plan to elect as many delegates as possible. It was a moment in which I was reminded that politicians are human beings, with their own uncertainties and fears. She had let us do our work and never second-guessed us, but I could have spared her the anxiety. I was sure to provide updates going forward (and it was something I was careful to remember in every campaign I ran thereafter).

Lesson: If you are confident you have a good idea, fight to be heard. If needed, stamp your feet to force the leadership to hear you out. And if you are that leader, don’t be so quick to dismiss someone fighting for your attention. They just might have an idea that can change the game.

The ground had been organized exceptionally well, with essentially a Lyn McLeod campaign manager in every riding. As importantly, we had spent a lot of time figuring out how best to work within the very complex delegate selection rules that had been put into place by the party executive. (Essentially, the number of delegates assigned to a candidate at the riding level was proportional to the percentage of the vote a candidate won in that riding. It meant you had to have enough people willing to run as delegates; otherwise you risked that a hard-won spot would be left unfilled.)

Bob Lopinski, a Liberal in his early twenties who had volunteered on the leadership campaign, had been after me for a few weekends in a row to sit down and discuss how to best work within the rules. I pushed him back more than once, citing more critical priorities. Finally, he refused to take no for an answer, and I heard him out. He had to walk me through it more than once, but I eventually realized that he’d found a way to make the rules work in our favour, given that we had the advantage of a lot of people seeking to become Lyn McLeod delegates.

We took the time to figure out which ridings would not have enough local people to fill their delegate slates—these were generally ridings where the Liberal Party did not have a strong base. We contacted the executives of those ridings and offered to submit enough out-of-riding memberships to ensure that the ratio of in-riding members to out-of-riding members was met (which in most cases was 10 percent, so for every ten local members we added one out-of-riding membership). Along with that, we made the commitment that we would not, without their express approval, run delegates who did not live in the riding.

Most ridings were grateful that we offered a way to ensure they did not get taken advantage of by campaigns willing to take their spots. As a result, when our competitors showed up on the day of the vote for the convention delegates, with the intention of adding people to the list to run, they were turned away because the out-of-riding membership quota was already full. Put more simply, if we could not have those delegate spots, no other campaign could have them either. It worked like a charm. We took some pretty angry phone calls from competing campaigns that day, but it was well worth it.

Even more importantly, Bob Lopinski’s uncanny ability to figure out the angles and understand the opposition was paying off. He never again had to work to get my attention, and I’ve been proud to stand with him in many campaigns, such as in 2014 when he chaired the party’s highly successful war room.

After delegate selection weekend, we were well in the game, which surprised many who thought Elston would catapult into the frontrunner status. The reality was that they were late into the race and we’d out-hustled them on the ground. At the same time, we were working hard to lock down ex-officio delegates who automatically earned the right to vote by virtue of their positions at the local riding level or within a provincial wing of the party.

Going into the convention, it was clear it would be a tight race. With six candidates, it was expected to take at least three ballots to get to a winner. For those who have never been to an Ontario Liberal Party leadership convention, it’s a process of elimination. At the end of each ballot, the candidate last on the ballot and any candidate with less than 10 percent of the vote would be knocked out of the race; this happens until a winner emerges. The winner has to reach the 50 percent mark. Delegates are committed to their candidate on the first ballot but are free to vote for anyone on subsequent ballots.

That meant deals were being discussed. While I was privy to some of this, one of the campaign chairs, Bob Richardson, was taking the lead and I was not necessarily kept up to date on developments. To the best of my knowledge, no one had committed to coming our way once they were eliminated or had dropped out of the race. There was just too much uncertainty around who would win, so no one wanted to commit before the first ballot results were known. It would be a game-time decision.

Lesson: Keep the focus on the big picture and the brass ring. And then do what it takes to make it happen.

A few days prior to the convention, I was approached by Bill Murray, who was managing the campaign for Steven Mahoney out of Mississauga. They knew they couldn’t win but wanted to place as well as possible on the first ballot. Bill and I were good friends, having worked together through the Peterson years, so I wasn’t shocked when he contacted me. What was surprising was the very unusual request he asked of us.

Bill’s numbers suggested that if Mahoney could pick up twenty to twenty-five votes on the first ballot, he could push ahead of Charles Beer and place fourth of the six candidates in the race. In return, Mahoney would throw his support to Lyn McLeod when he was forced from the ballot. I held my breath for a minute as the impact of the request sunk in. It was a massive opportunity to ensure momentum at the convention, which was something I knew to be essential if a win was going to be possible. But could such a high-risk strategy be implemented successfully?

I spoke first to Deb Matthews, another campaign chair, about the idea. We agreed it was wild, and it would be incredibly difficult to implement quietly. At the same time, we recognized that support from even one candidate could give us sufficient swing to win in the very competitive scenario we were facing. So, we decided to take it up the chain of command. Together Deb and I approached Bob. I recall one or two others in the room, but I don’t remember who they were. The answer was no—we could not take the risk. It was Bob’s view that we needed all our support with us from the first ballot; otherwise, we could inadvertently miscount and hurt our chances by letting Elston get too far ahead too early on.

I knew in my gut it was the wrong decision. I went back to my data and checked our numbers again, for what felt like the millionth time. I trusted the data and I believed it accurately forecasted what would happen, ballot by ballot. I went back to Deb and said exactly this, and ultimately we decided to go ahead on our own. It was not meant to be disrespectful or deceitful, but we knew there was no choice; we had to do what would give us the best chance to win the leadership. With such a large number of ex-officio delegates, it was easy to identify twenty-five people we could trust to do what was needed without asking a lot of questions.

The Friday evening prior to Saturday’s balloting, Deb and I reached out to the individuals identified and explained the situation one by one. These had to be people with ex-officio status because under the rules, elected delegates were bound on their first vote. Reactions varied. Some were intrigued, some thought we’d lost our minds. (A few said no, they just couldn’t do it.) We finally convinced enough delegates to do as we asked on the basis that it was for one ballot only, and that the reward was well worth the risk. We sealed the deal with Bill. Shockingly, not one word leaked overnight.

It was indeed worth the gamble. However the extra twenty-five votes ended up keeping Mahoney from finishing last, but he was only twenty votes ahead of David Ramsay so he was sitting in fifth rather than fourth. A furious Bill Murray accused me of reneging on the deal. Bill and I had a heated exchange at the back of the balloting area. I gave him a partial list of the individuals we had asked to vote for Steve and urged him to check with them on how they had voted. I also explained as calmly as I could that our numbers always showed Beer solidly in fourth place, and that the votes we loaned to them likely wouldn’t have allowed Mahoney to overtake him.

Our actions actually pushed Ramsay to last place, allowing Mahoney to finish fifth. I further explained to Bill my belief that some of Steve’s ex-officio support had bled to Greg Sorbara, who had entered the race late—something Bill admitted was likely true. He eventually calmed down and the deal remained intact. After the second ballot, Steve Mahoney kept his promise to cross the floor and throw his support to Lyn McLeod. It was a game-changer, as we were able to show momentum and grow our vote. I’ll never forget the look on Murray Elston’s face, watching helplessly as Steve Mahoney turned into our candidate box.

Lesson: The ground game matters. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

When I look back on the 1992 leadership convention, I recall that we ran the day with military discipline and precision: I had fought to get radios for fifty people, despite being told the budget allowed only twenty-five. I said it was not enough to cover the ground. There would be no air war that mattered that day. The outcome would be dictated by tracking each delegate as their candidate dropped from the race. Only brute force would make that possible, which meant literally tracking people for twelve hours across Copps Coliseum and several surrounding hotels and restaurants (today there would likely be an app for it!).

There were probably two hundred people working the delegates, reporting to the fifty people on the radios. It was a manual effort—it was labour intensive and required incredible attention to detail. I had carefully hand-picked each person carrying a radio based on my belief that they would stay focused and not be distracted by the social part of the convention. And if I did not hear from them at least hourly, I went looking for them.

I had been relentless around keeping Lyn focused on talking to delegates. When a candidate freed their delegates, which they all did except Steve Mahoney, we needed Lyn to speak with as many of them as possible. The problem was that what little time was available between ballots was peak time for media. There was a critical moment where I needed Lyn to convince a delegate to vote for her. I found her in a media scrum and was told I’d have to wait. In my mind, that was not an option. No one who mattered to the outcome was watching television. I literally reached in and physically yanked Lyn from the scrum. It was not well-received by the media or our communications team, but I was wholly focused on whatever it took to bring over one more delegate.

One of most extraordinary and intense moments I’ve experienced in politics was after Greg Sorbara left the ballot. If he threw his support, he’d decide who would be leader (the usual reference was “king-maker” but there was a woman in this race). No one knew what he planned to do. As soon as the fourth ballot results were announced, I headed over to Greg’s candidate box. I could see him from the floor but we were warned to stay out while he consulted with his team and made his decision. I headed back to our box and decided to try to phone him from the landline installed there. I had carried around a small, laminated card in my pocket all day and I took it out for the first time. On the card were the numbers for the landlines in each candidate box—all except the one I needed. It was the first time that day that our attention to detail had failed us.

Time was running out and I was running on adrenaline. It was midnight by now, and we’d been on the convention floor since noon. I stood on a chair in order to be seen and yelled to anyone who could hear me to “Get me the fucking number.” A few seconds later I heard Steve Hastings, one of our organizers, yelling my name. I looked over at him and he threw me a roll of masking tape. Exasperated, I yelled that I did not need masking tape. But I managed to catch the roll and something caught my eye. Steve had written the number around the outside of the roll, as he didn’t have any paper. Shaking my head at the absurdity of it all, I dialled the number.

Isobel Finnerty, Greg’s campaign chair, answered the phone. She and I were not on the best of terms but I had learned a lot from her when we worked together in the Premier’s Office and we respected each other as political operatives. She would not let me speak to Greg as he was about to address his delegates. Then she did something she did not have to do, and it was pretty special.

She put the phone down but left the line open so I could hear Greg’s speech (with the added benefit of blocking anyone else trying to get through). His speech was emotional and moving. My heart soared as I heard him free his delegates. The minute he finished I signalled to Lyn and our assembled team to rush en masse across the bleachers to Greg’s area. Our system kicked in and with discipline and laser-focus, we reached out to as many delegates as we could before the final vote commenced.

I caught Greg’s eye but I could tell he did not want to talk with me. It wasn’t the time and he’d done what he believed was best. He and I talked about it many times in the years that followed, and he’d remind me that his decision to release his delegates made it possible for us to win. He was right. Had he thrown his support to Elston, his very committed delegates would have followed him and we would have lost. Many of his delegates left without voting on the final ballot and others spoiled their ballots by writing in Greg’s name.

In the end, it came down to nine votes. There is no doubt in my mind that our organizational efforts won the day. (The only blip I remember is that damn laminated card.) I believe it is the closest delegated convention in history. And when the convention ran seriously over the scheduled timing, we placed volunteers at the doors to try to prevent delegates from leaving before the final ballot. Many did leave, but we worked to ensure as few of them as possible were Lyn McLeod voters.