The election has been decided, all the votes have been counted, the successful candidates are now preparing to take the seats they've been appointed to fill by popular vote. What is there left to say? Actually, there's a lot. An election is about more than who wins it, and this is a podcast about the lessons learned from the ones who tried but didn't succeed.
On this edition, we're joined by Charlene Downey and Matt Saunders. Downey ran in Ward 1 and Saunders ran in Ward 4, two of the most...
The election has been decided, all the votes have been counted, the successful candidates are now preparing to take the seats they've been appointed to fill by popular vote. What is there left to say? Actually, there's a lot. An election is about more than who wins it, and this is a podcast about the lessons learned from the ones who tried but didn't succeed.
On this edition, we're joined by Charlene Downey and Matt Saunders. Downey ran in Ward 1 and Saunders ran in Ward 4, two of the most competitive races in the 2018 election with two incumbents running against six challengers in each. Neither Downey nor Saunders were successful, finishing in fourth and fifth places in their races respectively, but they definitely have lessons on politicking to teach us.
Now running in municipal elections isn’t easy. There’s no party apparatus, the campaign is long, and you’ve got to fit little things like jobs and family around all the additional hours of door knocking, attending events, and answering questions from press and constituents. So what do you take with you when the campaign is over, and you don't take office? This is the insight we'll try and get from Saunders and Downey on this podcast.
In this conversation a lot of ground was covered, insights on all the hard work, the homework, the long hours, the long list of demands for time, and how, as candidates, they balanced it all. There's also some discussion about Downey and Saunders' desire to have had a more substantive debate about policy and issues during the campaign, and how media might do better while covering the election beyond the horse race. On top of that, there's some talk about election night, and what happens next so far as their political careers are concerned.
So let's see what wisdom we can gleam from the campaign trail on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
The new city council will be sworn in on Monday December 3, and Guelph Politico will be there with live coverage. In the meantime, there will be a "lame duck" session of council, the final meeting of the 2014-18 council, on Monday November 19.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here.
Remember that the Politicast Podbean channel is also the host for podcast versions of Open Sources Guelph. The previous Thursday’s episode of Open Sources will be posted on Mondays.
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