Campaign workers feel the pressure

It’s very often the case that candidates are easier to deal with than their campaign teams. This provincial election campaign has exhibited flashes of that, though, for the most part, the folks who toil passionately for their candidates have been co-operative and helpful.

This evening, though, I received a call from Brenda Craig, a former national television reporter who is currently a communications manager for Terry Lake, running as a Liberal in Kamloops-North Thompson.

I was “compelled,” she informed me, to publish a letter she had just emailed rebutting a letter to the editor from former teacher Rod Andrew in Saturday’s edition, explaining why Andrew isn’t going to vote for Lake. Andrew wrote that Lake doesn’t have the qualities he wants in an MLA, including the fact he’s known to be somewhat temperamental.

This cheesed Craig off and she wanted a chance to answer Andrew, now. I let her know I didn’t much appreciate being called on a Sunday evening to deal with a response to something that had been published a day and a half before, and, in fact, was based on comments that had been published several times before.

I can’t say the conversation was entirely cordial as I don’t react well to political staff members who tell me I must do something or they will report me to the B.C. Press Council. Threats tend to make me less amenable to meeting a request, but in the end one has to deal with the validity of the request rather than basing your actions on what you think of the person on the other end of the phone.

Despite the fact Lake readily acknowledges he’s temperamental (I worked with him on council for three years and he’s always been candid about it), bottom line was one of his campaign team felt it important to answer, and the request to do so was fair enough. So, a part of my evening has been spent pulling apart an Opinion page that was already complete and on its way through the production department to the press room, but I got’er done.

Lake isn’t the only one who has a campaign worker who feels free to make demands of the press, though. There’s Salomé Cerqueira, the Ontario NDP worker brought in to work on Doug Brown’s attempt to defeat Lake in Kamloops-North Thompson.

Earlier in the campaign, Cerqueira ordered us not to contact Brown directly under any circumstances. All requests for contact must go through her. Excuse me?

The best way to deal with such control people is to ignore them, and I must say we’ve never had a problem getting hold of Brown direct. Remember when Chad Moats tried the gatekeeper approach with mayoral candidate Murphy Kennedy?

Just like candidates, campaign workers come in all types. Sometimes the pressure of a campaign just makes them act in ways they shouldn’t, and one must make allowances. I must say, the local campaign managers — those who head up the campaign teams and have the difficult job of keeping things on track, and who have the real pressure on them — have been great to work with.