ROTHENBURGER – The challenges of making the big announcement

TOMORROW MORNING (Wednesday, Jun 17, 2026), Margot Middleton will announce her candidacy for another term on City council.

Okay, technically, it will be a “special announcement” that will “include remarks from Middleton regarding the upcoming municipal election.” The notice comes via local PR firm Amplified Consulting Inc.

One can assume she hasn’t involved a PR firm for the purposes of announcing she isn’t going to run again.

It’s tricky, getting a turnout for an official announcement about one’s candidacy without giving the game away. The only practical way to go about it is to let the word out that you’re going to announce something without saying anything at all about what it is you’re going to announce. Of course, that tends to dampen the interest level.

Middleton has taken the middle ground (no pun intended), basically making it obvious she’s going to run, without outright saying so. Thus preserving media coverage for that day.

Nelly Dever took an entirely different approach for the announcement of the formation of the Pivot Kamloops slate — being pretty specific about what was going on (including her intention to run for mayor) but attempting to embargo local media from letting the cat out of the bag.

This method assumes the media are simply a publicity tool to do the bidding of politicians.

So why not just email a statement of intentions instead, making the announcement direct? Ray Dhaliwal skipped even the email route today, revealing in an interview with CBC Daybreak’s Doug Herbert that he’s going to take another run at the mayoralty. But now, of course, he’ll have to follow up by telling the other media and hope they forgive him for handing Herbert the scoop.

On the other hand, he’s saved himself the silly dance of announcing an announcement, not to mention organizing the event and finding an appropriate venue. Deciding on the venue is an interesting exercise in itself. Sometimes there’s supposed to be some significance behind it, sometimes not.

Middleton’s gathering is set for the McArthur Island Sports and Events Centre. That space doesn’t seem relevant to anything current so maybe it’s just a comfortable place for it.

Others have trusted in the weather, going outdoors. Mike O’Reilly held his event in front of City Hall. Nancy Bepple chose a chilly day in Riverside Park.

Stephen Karpuk, a.k.a. Coun. Fartgate, made his announcement at the entrance to the fire-destroyed Red Bridge, saying replacing it will be one of his main priorities, even though the City has no authority over that issue.

Nelly Dever picked the Jenn Casey memorial park at the airport. Near as I can tell, she wanted to emphasize her involvement in sprucing up the corridor to the airport, though she balked at the initial price tag while she was on council.

Incumbent Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson’s choice for his announcement months ago was the lookout at the top of Columbia Street. Just a scenic spot overlooking the city.

(By the way, I used St. Andrew’s on the Square for my own mayoral announcement just because I have a soft spot for heritage buildings, that one in particular. It worked great. But I sent out individual invitations instead of a mass email to media.)

Incumbents and others with a degree of name recognition in the community have a natural advantage in staging these things and in attracting media coverage. Reporters aren’t nearly as likely to put it on their calendars if the person deciding to run is an unknown.

One of the advantages of going on location for these announcements is that it provides some good visuals of the candidate with the venue in the background, and a demonstration that the candidate has support.

Otherwise, it’s mostly for the satisfaction of the candidate and the candidate’s team, giving them a sense of forward motion, of the fact that the game is now on.

Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, writes for the Kamloops Chronicle and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and was a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.