Former MPs tell us how they would be campaigning, if they were running in this election

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – They’ve all been there: Door- knocking, handing out leaflets, and enduring long days trying to convince you to vote for them.

Three former MPs are talking about what they’d be doing right now if their names were on the ballot this time around.

Ujjal Dosanjh, Stockwell Day and Libby Davies all say they’d be meeting people face-to-face.

Dosanjh — who represented the Liberals — says that means going door-to-door, going to malls and community centres.

He says he’d also be sending out leaflets, going to all-candidates meetings, and looking for any opportunity to get on the news in a positive way.

“At this point, my advice to candidates would be to door-knock morning, noon, and night. That way, because it’s going to be a close election, voters get to see you face-to-face. You get to hear them face-to-face, and they get to decide whether they like what they see or not,” says Conservative Stockwell Day.

He adds a candidate is paying attention first and foremost to their local campaign.

“Then you’re keeping an eye on what’s called the ‘air campaign.’ That’s what’s going with the leader of your party, what sort of announcements are going out there, and how you tie that in at the local level. So, it’s a matter of keeping an eye on the ground and keeping an eye on the air.”

Dosanjh acknowledges it’s pretty hard to engage people at this point given the long campaign.

“Unless you are already a high-profile person, it’s going to be pretty hard for you as a candidate to individually make a mark in the riding. So, your fortunes would ride on the coattails of your leader’s performance,” he says.

New Democrat Libby Davies says you sometimes have to be creative in grabbing people’s attention.

“It might be going to an unusual meeting place where people are and they don’t expect to see you. It might be organizing a forum or a roundtable discussion…. It might be using social media very effectively to get your message out and to engage people that way. It might be challenging your other candidates to a debate, if you find that the candidates are not really getting out there and there’s not a lot of debate time between the candidates. Then maybe you put out a challenge as to why the other parties aren’t sending their candidates to meetings and doing debates.

“I think you can be creative in the way you talk to people. You can talk to young people; you can seek out voters who are voting for the first time. You can talk to even kids in school because they go home and talk to their parents. I always used to go to schools and talk to kids. They would come into the campaign office, and it was always a very interesting way to listen to kids and to see what they cared about, and knowing that they would probably go home and talk to their parents, as well.”

Davies adds the biggest challenge now — midway through the campaign — is to keep the energy going.

She says it’s important for candidates to pace themselves and to take care of their volunteers, advising that candidates put everything else on hold during the campaign if they can.

Voting day is October 19th.