By Neala Barton
Luc Lapointe weaves his way down Somerset Street, ducking in and out of shops and restaurants as he goes.
Inside, he chats up the business owners, shaking hands in hopes of winning people’s support. Back out on the street, he oversees the placement of his glossy campaign posters.
“Did you put one inside?” the Somerset Ward city councillor candidate asks his campaign manager Maha Surani, whose arms are draped with yellow posters featuring Lapointe’s beaming face.
Lapointe prefers that his signs stay behind windows, inside shops, to keep them away from permanent markers.
“I’m always afraid people are going to go and put moustaches and glasses,” he confides, acknowledging the risk of plastering Somerset Ward with his photo.
Still, he says being visible is the only way he is going to win this election and beat long-time incumbent Diane Holmes.
Besides Lapointe and Holmes, three other candidates are running in Somerset: George Guirguis, Karen Dawe, and Idris Ben-Tahir.
Their campaign strategies and resources are as diverse as the area they want to represent. From fundraising, to publicity, to volunteers, every candidate has taken a different approach, either by choice or because they had no other option.
Some, like Dawe and Ben-Tahir, are running with little help. “I’m doing it myself,” Dawe says.
Others have budgets running in the thousands of dollars and dozens of volunteers.
And one, George Guirguis, has been campaigning since May in hopes that a strong presence in the ward will make up for lack of volunteers or a bank account full of campaign-ready cash.
But at least three candidates, Lapointe, Ben-Tahir, and Dawe, started campaigning late in the game. Some are now regretting it.
“I’m running behind,” says Dawe, who was one of the last candidates to join the race.
“I think we just needed to get out sooner. We kind of laid low for the summer. But now we’re trying to get up full force,” says Surani, Lapointe’s right-hand woman.
Lapointe has started to rally his troops: he has his six children on board and that is only the beginning of his volunteer recruitment. He estimates that he has roughly 50 volunteers onside.
But volunteers are only one small part of any election strategy for that matter.
“There is an enormous amount of activity that goes on behind the scenes,” says Joe Varner, an election strategist who says he has lost count of how many campaigns he has worked on over the years.
“People really don’t know much about what goes on in an election . . . Politics is always strategy.”
Running an effective campaign takes a lot of organization, foresight and finances, he stresses.
“In a campaign, a lot of money needs to be up front,” says Varner, explaining that even buying signs can run candidates thousands of dollars. And heaven forbid your signs are only one-sided.
“It’s a game. It’s a game of perceptions,” Varner says, pointing to how candidates evaluate their opponents’ strengths. “If you buy a one-sided sign, you’re lacking in cash.”
In Somerset Ward, some candidates have raised big money – Diane Holmes says she plans to spend the $19, 611.10 campaign limit mandated by city regulations – while others are shunning fundraising altogether.
“Money-wise, it doesn’t take big huge money. When you put that much money in a campaign, it looks very bureaucratic,” says Elias Hachem, one of Guirguis’ campaign advisors.
Guirguis says he plans to spend his own money on his campaign so he can spend his time doing things other than fundraising.
“I am campaigning every day from 6 a.m. until midnight,” says Guirguis. “I don’t need money from anyone. I need support: people to go and vote.”
But an April 2005 report to the city’s corporate services and economic development committee says fundraising has a big impact on the outcome of a race. It was reported that, in the 2003 election, 89.5 per cent of candidates who won their seat had raised more money than their opponents.
That means Somerset Ward candidates without a steady cash flow are looking at other options. When asked what it will take to win, Lapointe says simply: “Visibility. Getting the people that are frustrated, the 80 per cent that are sitting on the couch, not interested in city politics.”
To get those votes, Lapointe is trying something new, in an effort to see younger voters at the polls.
“We’ve got an animator right now trying to do a cartoon of the whole light rail thing. . . it’s going to be a minute and a half clip we’re going to put on the Internet, on youtube.com,” he says, outlining how he is going to use the popular video-sharing website to engage youth.
He says he is also planning to get more aggressive when it comes to media attention.
“I think in front of a camera, I can hold up [to] anybody on issues.”
But Lapointe has not had his camera time yet. Instead, two other Somerset Ward candidates have been the most recent to grab the spotlight.
Holmes and Guirguis made headlines when each accused the other’s campaign team of taking down their signs.
“Politics can get pretty petty,” says Varner of the sign wars. “There are all kinds of strategies.”
And finding one that works can be as unpredictable as the election itself.