It’s the
organization, stupid, as James Carville might say, and it’s always been
about organization when you talk about leadership campaigns, especially
federal Liberal campaigns. And the person who has realized this political
reality is Liberal MP Belinda Stronach who, last week, gave the Liberal
congregation and most of the media on the Hill that clear message.
Pierre Trudeau won the first time because of his organization, not because
of his charisma. Jean Chrétien had a lot of charisma in 1984, but lost
because he didn’t have the organization that John Turner had. It was the
“gentry” of the party who always decided who the next Liberal leader would
be.
It was the organization that brought Jean Chrétien to the top in 1990 and it
was the organization of Paul Martin’s that brought Chrétien down. However,
many things have changed lately in the Liberal Party, the Canadian political
organization considered the “natural governing party,” party whose members
have always voted for “the leader that can take them to the government.”
Winning, they used to say, is everything.
Well, that’s no longer true. Liberals did not need to win with Jean Chrétien
because they had won already three times and they were still winning. They
brought him down, nonetheless. And the Martin Liberals kept fighting against
Liberals, even though their party was going down the tube.
Why? Because the Liberal Party has no central organization anymore; it has
“organizations.” In the past, they have run the party like it was a
franchise: the headquarters was in Ottawa with many branches throughout the
country.They had one boss in Quebec, one in Ontario, one in Atlantic Canada,
one in Central Canada and one in the West. If you go back, you could create
a very structured chart. Not anymore.
Who’s the boss in Ontario? Who is in charge in Quebec? Not to mention the
confusion in Atlantic Canada and the West and the black hole in Central
Canada. Some are saying it is good that there are no “bosses” any longer,
there is more freedom. Yes, but there’s one condition: the rules for the
election of the new leader should be simpler. It should be a
one-member-one-vote system. Technology, said Stronach last week, exists.
Instead the Liberal Party has maintained the same structure they put in
place when they were used to controlling the outcome, limiting the choice
between one or two candidates. That means that the next leader of the
Liberal Party still will be whoever is going to have the best organization.
Let’s look at the structure and the rules.
The race officially started last Friday and the people who will vote to
select or become delegates for the December convention are only the members
that have joined the Liberal Party earlier than July 1.They will choose the
delegates during the weekend of Sept. 29-Oct. 1.The vote for the new leader
will take place on Dec. 3 this year in Montreal. Every riding association
will elect 12 delegates plus three to five ex-officio members. This means
that each candidate has to present a list with 12 potential delegates.
Considering that there are 308 ridings, each candidate must present 308
lists with 12 potential delegates. To appreciate the value of a good
organization, consider that each delegate must have 288 names only to fill
the slates of the 24 Toronto ridings. This is needed on the top of the
people belonging to the organization. The GTA has another 19 and Ontario a
total of 304 ridings.
A
simple calculation indicates that each candidate needs 3,690 names only to
fill the list of the potential delegates. It will be very difficult to
gather all those “liberals” especially if you have to multiply that number
by six (the potential number of the final list of candidates).They need more
than 22,000 Liberals to be potential delegates! Furthermore, even if you
have them, how are you going to handle them? Moreover, all of that is not
even the most difficult part.
The candidates have less than three months to recruit new members. That
requires a lot of manpower and, again, a lot of organization. The fact that
even Belinda Stronach had to bow out because of the lack of time to build an
organization, means that even the best organization money can buy is not
good enough to cope with the “organizations” already in place and solidly in
the hands of people who are not for sale. And Ms. Stronach knows that: she
went through that exercise when she ran for the leadership of the
Conservative Party. A lot of money was not enough to go up against the
organization of Stephen Harper.
That’s why I’m very skeptical when I hear some colleagues and Liberal
strategists say that the leadership race is going to be about policy and
renewal. It’s still about organization, and the people who control the
former “franchises” have no more masters and they are not for sale.
