Greg, I couldn’t agree more: a) these are terrible number and b) all candidates have done very little to win/win back support in these ridings. Most have given lip service to the urban/rural divide and little more. Surely there is a pragmatic reason to identify, pursue and woo potential delegates in all ridings rather than to focus all your effort on the urban ridings where there is heated competition for each and every supporter…..

To date, Dion, Bevilacqua and Rae are the only leadership contenders who have come to my riding and I am withholding my support for any of them until I get a better sense of their commitment to remote ridings. Ignatieff is coming in September and Kennedy (sorry Greg) and his campaign team have barely bothered to be in touch – oh, that’s right, Kennedy spent the month of August in Quebec brushing up his French. So all I can say is that your guy is not as interested in the grassroots as you may think. I doubt very much at this point that he will get my support. I am now down to a short list of two.

Maatje Piket
Skeena Bulkley Valley

Is it not equally if not more “important to note as we choose a leader”, one who’s a fervent supporter of the Iraq war, Missile Defense, Bush doctrine of preemption, “spreading democracy” by gun point, mourns the tragic events at Qana because “it proved a victory for Hezbollah”, and “not losing sleep” over the dead women and children?

The future direction of the party must be arrived at through an open and blunt airing of the differences between the candidates. No interest is served by substituting it with a lovefest, other than shielding extremist views from scrutiny. The reconciliation and unity effort should come after the process, not before.

Let me be clear: the post rebuts your claim that the early donations demonstrate widespread grassroots support for Ignatieff; the purpose is not to “attack” Ignatieff, but rather to present some facts (who made the donations and what they do, and what share are < $200). You will note that I say explicitly that "That’s not to say that Ignatieff still doesn’t have strong grassroots support, it is just to say that only about 1 in 4 of his donations was from grassroots donors, compared with 40% for Kennedy, and nearly 60% for Dion." And in my post on the Toronto/Non-Toronto numbers, I say “Michael Ignatieff’s support is heavily Toronto-centred, but he maintains solid support outside of Toronto as well, although by not nearly as wide a margin as the overall fundraising numbers suggest.” So I’m in total agreement with you — Ignatieff has broad national support — but among the CEOs, lawyers, intellectuals, and ex-officios who made up the bulk of the early donations. I think that’s the point you are missing. We will have to wait until we get the July and August numbers to see whether that holds for grassroots support.

But I’m quite sure your understanding of grassroots is not what most people take it to mean. And you also seem to deny that elites exist (note: I did not speak derisively about you or elites, I just pointed out the facts). Feel free to review Wikipedia’s entries for Grassroots and Elites. But, it does bring up an interesting dilemma for the Liberals — if the core Party support comes from CEOs, lawyers, ex-officios, and academics, does that constitute the grassroots? I can see how Liberals might see that as *their* grassroots, but I seriously doubt that the rest of the country sees that group as grassroots (I personally don’t think that the block support of the senior partners at Fasken Martineau demonstrates grassroots support, for example). Elites exist in all parties, but some parties are better at mobilizing everyday voters. All of this speaks of the challenges the Liberals face connecting with everyday Canadians.

If you are basing your claim that the rank-and-file are “coming back” on the donor list, I think you are over-estimating the reality. If I am a Liberal Party executive, I would be very worried about the donations. 50% of ALL donations to ALL candidates are from the 416 area code (which has just 5% of the delegates). There were zero donors north of the Island of Montreal in Quebec (and only 20 outside of Montreal, period). 3 donors (all to Dryden) in NL. 2 donors (both Kennedy) in PE. Just 9 in rural Alberta. Just 5 in rural Manitoba (all Kennedy). Just 5 in the Territories. Just 5 outside of Vancouver/Vancouver Island in B.C. These are terrible numbers. No campaign – Ignatieff or otherwise, can use these numbers to claim to have done a good job attracting support outside of the Party’s traditional base. The Liberals lost 2/3 of the seats in the election, and this leadership campaign — including all candidates — has done very little to win back support in those ridings. The numbers speak for themselves. Again, we have to wait for the July and August numbers to really know whether support is building at the grassroots level (after all, many campaigns only held their first fundraisers, including Kennedy and Dion, in July).

-Greg

While you are clearly wrong in your analysis, what bugs me the most and disappoints me the most is it perpetuates a significant problem in the party. Some campaign supporters are far more interested in attacking others, and thereby further the deterioration of the party, than they are of supporting their preferred candidate.

Your post was not designed to explore where the party rank-and-file support is going, but to go after any perceived advantage Ignatieff may have. Why else ignore completely my many arguments? Why else just focus on Ignatieff? Why else the focus on “elites” support instead of his rank-and-file support? Talk of party “elites” is also, in my mind, a deliberately divisive tactic. I would have been far more impressed if you wrote about how Kennedy has grassroots support. I would have been excited to hear that he is pulling in support from lots of new Liberals. Building the party is what this campaign should be about.

Frankly, I think it is symptomatic of where our side of the fence is (progressive/liberal/centre-left) these days. In many ways, our vision “well” has run dry so we spend most of our time attacking; rather than tell people why they should vote for us (or our candidate), we tell people why they should not vote for the other guy. That was the central theme to the federal Canadian elections of 2000, 2004 and 2006 and the US elections of 2002, 2004 and, so far it seems, 2006. Voters aren’t buying it. They want a reason to vote for someone not just against someone.

Ignatieff’s campaign theme is party renewal. After every meeting or rally I’ve been to, he says “I want to win, but it is far more important that the party win.” He has done outreach for membership growth that does not benefit him. For example, we were told when recruiting new members that if we came across a non-supporter who hadn’t yet decided who to support, including those who had at least decided not to support Ignatieff, that we were to sign them up anyway as part of party renewal. That’s real leadership if you ask me. We cannot win if we are only in attack mode when it comes to other candidates. And the support he has – from all economic groups, from all regions, from all ages, from all levels of the party – evidences his appeal to the desire to renew and come back together as a party.

My personal campaign has been about promoting him – because obviously I think he is our best bet for party renewal of members, renewal of ideas, renewal of the organization, doing things differently in deeds instead of mere words – and not just avoiding direct attacks on other candidates but promoting them as well. After all, one of these leaders is going to end up our leader, end up my leader.

I’ve never had a post that focused exclusively on tearing another candidate down. Criticism is important in a campaign, but absent promotion it is just hurting the party’s rebuilding efforts. Indeed, I have criticized the weaknesses of other candidates, including Ignatieff, but never without highlighting how their strengths outweigh their weaknesses.

Take Kennedy for example. The fact that he dropped out of university (and no, it was not so he could run a food bank) and is barely bilingual and doesn’t have a federal policy and speaks only in empty platitudes (what the heck is an “international country”???) is important for all to note as we choose a leader. But he has amazing support among the youth (rivalled only by Ignatieff and, to a bit lesser extent, Brison), is a great speaker, is young, has a great resume, has done an awesome job as Minister of Education, is from the west (absolutely critical to rebuilding efforts) and, along with Hall Findlay, Brison, Bevilacqua and other non-candidates represents the next generation.

Obviously, I don’t think his strengths are strong enough for him to be my first choice, but he’d be a decent choice and I’m excited that he wants to be part of the next Liberal government.

Sorry for the long-winded rant but the reason I got actively involved in this party is because I saw the need for us to come together. No candidate can do that on their own. Not Ignatieff and certainly not Kennedy. We, the rank-and-file supporters, need to be coming together too. Otherwise, we are just giving the conservatives a blank cheque.

If the candidates and their supporters can come together instead of falling further apart, we can rebuild the party and then start convincing people why they should be voting for us again.

Ted

The far left?! So the party center supports the Iraq war, Missile Defense, Bush doctrine of pre-emption, “spreading democracy” by military means?!

Or might it be possible that it is Iggy who is perched on the far right? How would one even distinguish Ignatieff from Harper on foreign policy?

The term grassroots evokes the idea of a cause. To Ignatieff supporters, I ask what is your cause? What are the unifying beliefs propelling your movement?

You don’t quite get it do you? Too bad for all of us. I wasn’t going to respond because it gets tedious constantly responding to those who would prefer to attack other candidates than promote their preferred choice, to grind the party down so we are battered and bruised and in no shape to take on Harper because we remain divided.

But it’s too important to me that we all come together to renew the party so I can’t let it go. So here is my admitted (mild-mannered) rant in response.

I have two many critiques of your response. I’ll split them up because your comments section doesn’t seem to allow for long comments.

The first: on grassroots.

I disagree with your conception of grassroots in a political organization. Grassroots means core support as oppose to party “elites”. It means policies and directions from the bottom up instead of the top down. This campaign has got to be about renewal and that means reaching out to the disaffected Liberal supporters, the core who have let their memberships lapse or who have voted but none too enthusiastically over the last many elections.

You like to paint me negatively as an “elite” but I’ve been a lifelong federal Liberal and never once been involved in anyway until a year or so ago. I’ve never been involved in a leadership campaign until this year. I am certainly no party “elite”. Ignatieff’s campaign is full of people like me, although most are much younger.

You’ve shown derisively he has the support of some of society’s “elites”. But you have deliberately ignored his grassroots support. Having by far the largest support in the Liberal caucus (the one’s who will be led by him) and having some Bay Street supporters or “elites” does not in any way negate the fact that he has rank-and-file support as well. If his show was being run by “elites” do you think they would have let a bunch of campaign rookies run his campaign? Walk into his headquarters and it is clear: his primary campaign team have never been in charge of a campaign before. Certainly many of society’s “elites” and some of the party “elites” have backed him, mostly probably because they saw a winner, but they were jumping on the bandwagon, not leading it.

Another point: look at your own graphs on regional support. Only Ignatieff has pulled significant support from Liberals across every region of the country. Like every candidate except Brison, he’s too heavily weighted in Toronto, but he pulled more from Alberta than any other province but Ontario, he had more from BC, Alberta and Ontario than any other candidate, and did very well in Quebec, the Atlantic and the prairies. No other candidate has that nationally broad support.

These are all indications that the party rank-and-file is coming back and they are coming back for Ignatieff.

But grassroots support for Ignatieff in no way means that other candidates are also not pulling in support from the rank-and-file. They are and good on them. You know damn well, though, that Dion, Kennedy, Dryden, Brison and every other candidate would love to have the widespread support from every sector and every region that Ignatieff has.

When the Liberal party releases the July numbers (any day now), let’s re-visit this. I believe it is misleading, if not outright incorrect, to suggest that Ignatieff’s early donations reflect broad grassroots support. I believe — backed up by the biographical evidence — that the early donations (overall for all the donations, but even more so for Ignatieff, Rae, Volpe) reflect the support of the party’s traditional power structure (i.e. party elites). So what we can say is that Ignatieff has strong support among the elites (and appears to have consolidated the more conservative side of the party, whereas the more progressive side is split into Dion, Kennedy, Rae; FYI, I don’t think it quite correct to say that the Liberals have a “far left”; if they are that far, chances are they are NDP or something else; labeling those who disagree with you as “far left” is a classic conservative tactic that you might want to re-consider). The given definition makes clear that the difference between grassroots/elites is on the basis of power, not income (Note: I didn’t claim that grassroots equaled low income, although to be sure the corollary is surely true: that the business execs, Bay Street lawyers like yourself, and intellectual elites are not poor).

Let me be clear about the $200 threshold. I arrived at $200 by cross-referencing the donations with the biographical information about the donors which I collected (at far larger a time commitment to which I should admit!). So, I didn’t set the figure and make a conclusion based on the percentages. I did the opposite. I looked at the donors, and concluded that the vast majority of elites donated over $200 (my sampling indicated that between 1 and 2 out of every 10 donations < $200 was from a party elite, and vice versa for donations > $200). After I determined that threshold, I simply tallied the donations.

There *is* a difference between the $200-$1000 range and the $1000+ range, but it reflects one’s status within a given strata. The vast numbers of donors from Fasken Martineau, Torys, BLG, etc give us a very clear pattern. Partners are more likely to donate $1000-$2000, while junior and mid-level lawyers (such as yourself) tend to be in the $200-$1000 range. Likewise, CEOs and company Presidents tend to be the very large donors ($3000-5000 range), thus eclipsing the Bay St partners. So indeed, there is a pecking order above $200, but the key stat is how many of the lawyers, business execs and intellectual elites donate < $200, or how many “average Canadians” donate more than $200 (as noted above the frequency was very low).

The average donation to which you refer is not a good measure because it says nothing about the distribution. In Ignatieff’s case, the small donations and large donations cancel each other out. But it still doesn’t change the fact that there are a very large number of donations from Toronto lawyers (particularly in the $500-$1000 range). You may believe that Bay St lawyers and business execs (and the intellectual elites like myself) are a part of the grassroots, but I don’t.

If you don’t think that the cost of being a delegate factors in, then you haven’t been talking to Ignatieff’s (or anyone else’s) organization people. It’s huge. Delivering delegates is as (or more) important as electing them. Remember neither the party (except for a few ridings) nor the riding association can pay for registration fees, which will be close to $1000. Add to that travel expenses and accommodation, and you are looking at minimum of $1500 on average. That’s not chump-change for most people. So, James Johnston is not entirely incorrect to suggest that the process does favour those with more financial resources.

-Greg