Episode 948: Forgotten but not gone

Zain 0:03

This is a Strategist episode 948. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan.

Zain 0:10

What the fuck are you still doing here, Stephen Carter? What the hell? Seriously.

Zain 0:15

Forgotten but not gone, the Stephen Carter story continues. Why are you here occupying the chair? I

Carter 0:21

I asked Jody if she cared, and she said, I ain't your mother, so here I am.

Carter 0:28

That's all it takes. Great start.

Carter 0:30

I think we're in a really good spot. I think things are going well for me.

Corey 0:34

That's good. So does everybody out there, do you think, know what happened here? We've been kind of hush about it on the podcast. We haven't talked much about the Calgary mayoral because of your deep, deep conflict. But our man Stephen here, he just campaigned, managed Jody Gondek to a pretty significant victory in the Calgary mayoral election. Would

Corey 0:53

Would you agree with that, Carter? Was it pretty significant?

Carter 0:56

No, it was really easy. Did you have

Corey 0:57

anything to do with

Carter 0:59

Just sat there, chaired some meetings, nothing to it.

Corey 1:02

Listen, buddy, I am so proud of you. You have gone from chief of staff of Canada's fourth largest province to chief of staff for Canada's third largest municipality. And I, for one, cannot wait until you're chief of staff to Canada's second largest community association.

Corey 1:17

It's a position they'll have to create for him

Zain 1:19

at the Rundle Community Association. No, it's Tuscany. I'm

Zain 1:24

really excited that they'll create that voluntary position for you. By the way, if your condo board is looking for a treasurer, Stephen Carter will be available in how long, Carter? Six to nine months? Six to nine months will you be available

Carter 1:39

treasurer? Might be after this podcast. I don't know.

Carter 1:43

Well. Touch and go.

Zain 1:45

As she said, she's not your mother, but she could definitely fire you. But she is your boss. Yeah.

Zain 1:52

Let's move it on to the headlines. We've got only one headline, and this one comes to us from Strategist Media. Third pundit on political podcast stumbles into political victory for candidate that could have won without him.

Zain 2:07

will now explain how I did it in 2017. How I brought Nahid Nenshi, a candidate that should have won by 35 points, and took him to victory by only nine.

Carter 2:24

that was that was quite a I remember that one. It was quite any any

Zain 2:27

any questions for how I did it, please. I'm open to any and all questions. Yeah.

Corey 2:31

Yeah. So you were basically running against a cardboard cutout of a conservative and you almost lost. Can you elaborate, please?

Zain 2:37

Yeah. So what ended up happening at the end of the day was that like we almost lost and there was this cardboard cutout of a conservative. And so what we decided to do was that, like, rather than lose, was to win, but just narrowly enough that the cardboard cutout of a conservative looked viable when he really should not have. Any other questions?

Zain 3:02

How did you do it?

Zain 3:04

Well, I think perseverance was one of the ingredients that I should have applied. lied uh let's

Zain 3:12

let's let's actually spend the time uh talking about uh your race steven carter um cory i guess you and i can both interview carter on this uh to talk to him about carter uh jyoti gandak she could have done this without you uh how did she do it despite you let's start here

Carter 3:31

well she's smarter than i am so that helps always uh hired

Corey 3:37

doesn't fully check out yet, but let's keep going. She

Carter 3:39

She was desperate. She'd worked her way through calling you two. And then when that didn't work, she called me.

Carter 3:46

So, you know, it's

Carter 3:48

it's worked its way out. I

Carter 3:50

I mean, she was a good partner for me because she certainly knew where she wanted to go with municipal policy and I didn't much

Carter 3:58

much care. So that worked out really well. You know, she had her own visions and her own ideas and all I needed to do was package them, which which is a lot of fun when you don't have to have a group of big arguments about policy and which direction to go. She knew where she wanted to go, so all I needed to do was package it into the right framing. God, he's spinning us already, Corey.

Corey 4:21

Yeah, this is what the show has become. Oh, my God. God help us. Jesus Christ. This is why you're still here. Maybe ask me a fucking real question.

Carter 4:27

question. Maybe ask me a real question.

Corey 4:30

You know what? I mean, I truly don't care about the race, so I'm challenged, but I actually do have a sincere question. Yeah, ask a sincere question. We've

Zain 4:39

We've allotted 48 minutes. Yeah,

Corey 4:43

That's okay. We only have one listener by this point, too, after that last answer. Yeah,

Zain 4:47

Yeah, and it's your boss. She's just

Zain 4:50

see if she's made the right fucking decision. She

Carter 4:52

She actually didn't know we had a podcast.

Carter 4:55

That was upsetting, I'm not going to lie.

Zain 4:59

What's your, what's your, what's your question? By real

Corey 5:01

real question, I mean, you basically did this in 2010. You were part of the leadership team that got Nenshi elected the first time, right? And then you retired,

Corey 5:10

retired, and then Zane managed to barely repeat the same thing years later with more resources. The only reason

Zain 5:15

reason in 2017 we won is because of that. I feel

Zain 5:18

feel like most of us were a drag on that campaign.

Corey 5:21

Go on. So, I

Corey 5:23

I mean, 11 years later, same city, right? The city's grown, the city's changed. Technology's grown, technology's changed. What was different? If you were going to sort of just step back and say, I did the same thing twice, then

Corey 5:37

then let's just even set aside the strategy was obviously very different. I think we should unpack that a bit. What with this being a strategy podcast. But how did

Corey 5:44

did you approach this differently? What had changed in the intervening 11 years besides the fact that you lost what few hairs you had remaining? Yeah,

Zain 5:51

Yeah, and that you went from brown male to brown female. So just what else changed besides those two things?

Carter 5:56

Well, besides those two. The number one thing that's changed is the cost of digital media.

Corey 6:02

yeah it was super cheap in 20 super

Carter 6:03

super duper cheap in 2010 and wasn't the targeting better now isn't

Carter 6:08

it's actually way worse so targeting was really good up until i don't know what was it called cambridge analytica and no

Zain 6:16

no that's just a fucking horse shit they weren't they were just selling bullshit anyways carter they were

Carter 6:21

were selling bullshit but the rest of us were doing real shit and that real shit went away with cambridge analytica and so now Now you're basically buying mass media when you're buying digital. So all of that targeting that we did for Nowhead Nenshi that was super identified and super strong, Richard Einerson, your partner at Northweather, Zane, did all of that targeting. It was amazing the work that he did of finding those digital audiences and making really micro buys that made unbelievable impact. fact, you know, like $25 on an ad or $5 on an ad. And he just pushed all these little buttons and every one of them seemed to work because he's kind of a, you know, a digital mind freak. None of that worked this time. All of this, when we bought our digital, it was almost like buying radio back in the day. We want to buy females 35 to 55. We want to buy, you know, so you're buying buying your media totally different. And the cost per thousand was

Carter 7:22

was almost the same. In fact, on a lot of mediums, it was higher to go digital than it was for us to do our sign campaign, or it was for us to do our direct campaign. One of the things I said to my Canada Post rep is, you

Carter 7:36

you know, when we talk of this campaign, we're going to have to speak of,

Carter 7:39

you know, the fact that we dropped 1.6 million pieces of mail, because that's so old school compared to, you know, what we did in 2010 when I bet you we didn't drop 400,000 pieces.

Corey 7:53

So I find that very interesting that you think the plural of medium is mediums and not media. But please go on also about your comments on, like, Canada Post.

Corey 8:04

Like, did you use Canada Post that much?

Carter 8:06

Yeah, Jesus Christ. One million pieces.

Corey 8:09

Yeah, 1.6 million. But this is a big city. Like, people don't realize the boundaries of Calgary. That's like one and a half mail drops. Yeah, it's like one and a half mail drops for the whole city. So did you do it by certain geographies? Yeah,

Carter 8:19

Yeah, I mean, we focused west side, west side north.

Carter 8:23

So basically from, I mean, this won't mean anything to anybody, but Ward 11 up to Ward 3, which was her ward, and based on voter turnout. And one

Carter 8:35

one of the things that we didn't have in the Nenshi election that we did have in this election was we did have northeast Calgary. So kind of more recent immigrant visible minorities. We did much better with in 2021 than I did in 2010. So very different voter profile in general. And that

Carter 8:55

that changed everything. I haven't seen the actual broken down results. They were just released.

Carter 8:59

So I don't even know like where we won and where we lost.

Zain 9:03

Corey, this is letting him go unfettered. I'm losing my mind. This is just killing me. This is killing me. I mean, you're doing great, but this is just killing me. Is it because I'm

Carter 9:13

I'm so amazing and you just about gave away the mayor's chair to Bill Smith, a guy named Bill Smith? Yeah,

Zain 9:19

Yeah, his name was literally Bill Smith.

Carter 9:21

Smith. Literally Bill Smith. This

Zain 9:22

This is why you let your candidates save you. Carter, question for you.

Zain 9:27

What was the strategy and what was kind of the weakest point in the strategy in retrospect? respect don't give us that don't give the don't give us like the revisionist history bullshit what was like you know the strategy in your mind and then where did you think you you fell short that perhaps your opponents didn't necessarily capitalize on or it didn't actually pan out in the way you needed but you won anyways i

Carter 9:48

think we were really weak in the last 10 days um

Carter 9:51

um i think that we where

Zain 9:53

where you had the greatest amount of your growth arguably you think you were the weakest

Carter 9:56

Yeah, we grew because of momentum. We grew because we kind of had created a, you know, when I talked about it after 2010, we called it myth. And I think that that was that always created a problem for me. But I'm going to return to that language, regardless of how much pain it caused me in the past. Wait,

Zain 10:13

Wait, why is the country paying? Sorry, tell me why.

Carter 10:16

So when we talk about myth, what I mean by myth is that something takes on characteristics larger than the actual campaign or the actual things to support it. So in 2010, Nenshi's campaign took on a mythical level. 2011, Allison's campaign took on a mythical level. It was bigger than that which supported it. it and again in 20 2021 um especially in the last 10 days we were supported primarily by myth because we didn't have the same number of signs out that everybody else had we didn't have any tv ads we didn't have any radio ads we didn't have ads in in like we had digital and you know i think cory you saw a graph of our digital spend that you you retweeted out at one point um our digital spend was off the charts compared to everybody else's digital spend but in part that's because because I had to make a strategic decision on which medium to buy because I could not afford to buy three different mediums. So I had to choose and

Carter 11:15

make a bet on which one was going to do the best. And I don't think the digital carried us.

Carter 11:21

I think that the myth carried us. We were going to win because we were going to win.

Zain 11:25

Were you legit freaked out in those last 10 days when you were like, did you know you were underperforming in the moment?

Zain 11:32

And did you freak out?

Carter 11:33

Not too much. I mean, the poll that came out from Leger that had us, what, four points up?

Carter 11:39

That poll was pretty good because I knew it was weak in northeast Calgary. And I knew it was weak with women.

Zain 11:45

You mean you underrepresented with those groups? Yeah.

Carter 11:48

Yeah. So if you're underrepresenting groups that we think we're going to be strong in. But

Carter 11:52

But if you told me that we were only going to have 375,000 people vote, and

Carter 11:57

and what did I think our chances were?

Carter 11:58

Especially given the last 10 days. I'm not sure. You'd be fucked.

Carter 12:02

I'm not sure. I don't think I would have picked that, you know, you take number two and number three and add them together and we still would have beat them. That

Carter 12:08

That certainly wasn't going to that. That was the weakest

Carter 12:11

moment and probably the lowest moment. But the second lowest moment was June, July, when

Carter 12:16

when we were heading into the best summer ever.

Carter 12:18

And, you know, we were we were the strategists ripping the shit out of Jason Kenney and, you know, that kind of direction. direction. But at that moment, if it is the best summer ever,

Carter 12:31

right, if it is the best possible outcome, my candidate is on the wrong side of that narrative.

Zain 12:37

Did you, did you do, Corey, I want you to jump in on one more question on polling. You mentioned polling card. Did you do internals or no, you couldn't afford them? We

Carter 12:43

We did a single robo.

Zain 12:46

That's it. You didn't have like, yeah, yeah. I remember in 2017, we had a pollster internally on our campaign team, but the amount amount of polls we ran were just some google polls near the end and then two big like pillar polls one that was six weeks out and i think one that was done several months before cory jump in

Corey 13:04

yeah we talked a lot so you know a bit of a disclosure here as this campaign was going on zane and i interviewed steven somewhat not even regularly a lot at the start of the campaign and less as it went on but just to try to pick his brain and sort of understand it and create a bit of a record so that we could blackmail them later and uh i

Corey 13:25

i remember you talking very early on about the complexity that was brought in by a federal election sort of looming out there right and we thought maybe spring maybe fall but almost for sure gonna happen during this municipal window and what the effect would be i'm gonna pump your tires a little bit here steven don't because don't don't yeah i'm gonna regret it immediately but in 2010 a lot of people know this story but i'm I'm going to tell this story for this audience here. There was a race for mayor in Calgary that Nahid Nenshi ultimately won. And at just this moment over the summer, Kent Hare, the former MP, former MLA here, he was in the race for mayor and he was leading. And Kent's a good friend of mine. I've known Kent for many, many years. And all of a sudden, Nahid Nenshi is in the race. And, you know, at one point, I think the hope was Nahid Nenshi would sort of help out Ken's campaign. That obviously didn't happen, right?

Corey 14:22

And all of these progressive organizers had started going to Nahid Nenshi, who was polling at, I don't know, 1% in the polls, if he was showing up in the polls at all.

Corey 14:31

And so I have coffee with Stephen at the Starbucks in Englewood, I remember. We're sitting out on the patio there. And I say, you got to get your guy out of the race. Like, what are you doing? Like, he's at, like, no percent. He's just sucking oxygen here. We've got Rick McIver over there. We've got Kent Hare over here. And this was before Barb Higgins joined the race, which added a whole element, for those of you who remember that and lived through that. It's like, Kent can win this thing, but he won't win this thing unless we're united. And,

Corey 15:00

you know, Stephen says, I don't think Kent's going to win this thing. I don't think Kent's going to win this thing. And I say, okay, smart guy, talk me through how Nahed Neji wins this thing. And I won't go blow by blow because I wouldn't do it justice, but Stephen then sits there for the next 10 minutes and tells me milestones, where they're going to be. Not total actual percents, but kind of like horse race numbers, you know, directionally where people are going to be. I'll be in the mix here, like all of a sudden polling in the crowd. And then just before this date, he'll be second or third. And then the idea is that will propel us going forward. And he just like really spelled it out. Talked about just before Thanksgiving, where it'd be just at the start of the root period where Nahid was going to be, all of this. and i remember leaving thinking god steven is so full of shit um

Zain 15:44

yeah which is nothing's changed yeah nothing

Corey 15:46

nothing has changed including the fact that he was right like he you know he followed the strategy and it worked really really well um

Corey 15:54

um i i have similar questions here

Zain 15:57

here somewhere jesus it's

Zain 15:59

story about me that i'm working into an interview about does anyone

Zain 16:04

anyone want to know about my lit drop strategy in 2017 what

Corey 16:10

do you want to know i have an open book i got flashes of that i got flashes of that 2010 here i gotta say right and yeah you know when when we first started talking to you uh it always seemed like jody was going to be a serious candidate because she was a sitting counselor right but those first polls had her i don't know steven what three percent four percent yeah

Corey 16:32

we started a lot Two percent.

Corey 16:33

percent. There you go.

Corey 16:35

And you had kind of a similar theory of campaign in municipal politics that I think is worth unpacking, which is, you know, positionally, it's important to be here or there. And so you spent a lot of your money and you put a lot of your effort in early to make sure you separated from this pack of two percenters, right, so that you were in the conversation. Because at that point, Jeremy Farkas was 25 percent. Yeah, I remember

Zain 16:57

remember at one point you were excited at being at 9 or something. Yeah, it was my point

Corey 17:01

point because 9 separates from the 2%. Yeah,

Carter 17:03

Yeah, you need to have a

Carter 17:07

between where you are and where they are in order to show that

Carter 17:12

that you're more real. And people don't understand the first 10% or 11% are way harder than the 11% to 40% is actually really easy. crazy but zero to eleven might be the hardest move that any campaign can actually make well

Corey 17:30

well you went really hard when other campaigns weren't in fact like jeff davison hadn't even entered the race which obviously looks like a huge error at this point because the conversation became about different candidates too early on but farkas jeremy farkas the the more conservative candidate who who came in second in this race he was way way ahead at that point and you kind of calculated early you crazy kids i i'm giving you the credit now but i'm sure it involved conversations with your candidate and all of that right you

Corey 17:58

you calculated you go hard at the start you separate yourself from the pack and this race is naturally going to drift towards an anybody but farkas race and

Corey 18:08

it did right like it absolutely did and and you had also sort of called the fact that when there was a federal election everything stops it's like freeze tag right and it's just like everybody has to stand still or that crazy woman in squid game is going to shoot you but uh i haven't seen that show but i am aware of its memes so but god that's like the most 2021 phrase i've ever heard but

Corey 18:33

my point is you wanted to be somewhere before the federal election because you knew nothing would move at that point and

Corey 18:39

and you wanted to be somewhere before uh you know before jeff davison got into the race because that would make sure that he was not the relevant in prison and you managed to hit those marks and so my question after what 30 fucking minutes of preamble here how

Corey 18:53

how much of that being

Corey 18:55

being honest with yourself was luck how much was strategy because like a lot i've rarely seen a strategy change so little over 12 months i guess that's

Zain 19:02

that's actually a really interesting question i

Corey 19:04

i will allow it

Zain 19:06

will allow it very

Carter 19:08

very little luck um

Carter 19:10

um and far more strategy and i think that it's because to your strategy or discipline

Corey 19:16

it was pretty disciplined but

Carter 19:18

but strategy is discipline right

Carter 19:20

right like you don't get to to fuck around on your strategy and then call it a strategy if

Carter 19:24

if you if you set a strategy and you write the piece on the piece of paper this is what we're going to do then

Carter 19:31

if you fuck around on it and you move away because you're not disciplined then

Carter 19:35

then you no longer executing that strategy so

Carter 19:39

wrote down so the strategy in in a nutshell and and cory's preamble this so i'll go back to 2010 in 2010 the strategy in a nutshell was be in third place by

Carter 19:49

by september the first right

Carter 19:52

right because if you're in third place the media are going to cover the top three candidates and that third place candidate up from september the first will be afforded a tremendous amount of momentum and if we do a tremendous amount of negative campaigning and i think barb higgins or or rick mciver if you ask them, the

Carter 20:10

the first thing they would say is, we did a tremendous amount of negative campaigning. They're not wrong. We did a ton. When you do those two things together, then you can bounce yourself from third place on September the 1st to winning on October the 18th. That wasn't available this time because it froze over

Carter 20:28

over the fall, right? We froze until the 20th or 21st of September

Carter 20:34

because of the federal election. We

Carter 20:36

We were frozen because of what I called COVID summer summer from

Carter 20:39

from June the 15th to that federal election. Nobody moved. Nobody got hurt. And arguably, one could say no one even moved in the federal election. Sure, we saw polling variances. But when push came to shove, everything came right back to baseline.

Carter 20:54

So the polling variance didn't actually matter.

Carter 20:57

So if we're frozen from June the 15th to September the 22nd, then it's all going going to come down to top two. And the top two is going to be three types of votes. Jyoti Gondek, Jeremy Farkas, anybody but Farkas.

Carter 21:11

If I can get to that place, I'll take the Jyoti Gondek and anybody but Farkas.

Carter 21:16

I don't care. I'm not too proud to take the anybody buts. Every vote is an earned vote. And so our race became June the 15th. And so we ran two test campaigns, campaigns dropping

Carter 21:30

dropping hundreds of thousands of brochures putting out large signs putting out medium signs making sure that people we we increased our name recognition from the low 20s into

Carter 21:41

into the high 60s before

Carter 21:43

before we even got into the campaign by

Carter 21:46

by doing these mini campaigns one we called the the

Carter 21:50

the the launch campaign which was around february march and then another one we call the spring campaign in may and june can

Zain 21:58

can i can i jump in cory yeah okay so

Zain 22:02

so what's really annoying is that you've told us all of this in real time we haven't documented so i know you're not bullshitting us which is just really i i can't tell you how annoying this is but i want to ask you a process question um how did you do strategy this round who who put this script together is it script by committee i'm kind of curious how you did it versus how other campaigns have done it Has this changed from 2010? Has this changed from Redford? Has this changed from any of your other successes or failures in terms of how you've scripted this thing? Was it you and the candidate? Was it you? Do you refine it with the team? I'm curious what you did this time. I know you use sounding boards and smart folks around you, but how did this come together as a process? Less so what it was, but as a process? process um

Carter 22:41

um the first process first of all constantly test the idea right

Carter 22:45

right and and i was even doing it with you guys all the way through every time we were talking you know i'd call you and say what do you think of this what do you think of that and so i would assemble a team in fact you can see on my wall there's a well maybe you can't see but on my wall over here there's a ton of of stickies and those are all the people that i would call over the course of a month to get their feedback on what i was doing or what i was thinking so i would test each of the elements So I'd call you guys and say, OK, here's my thinking. It's going to freeze for the federal election.

Carter 23:16

Tell me why I'm wrong.

Carter 23:18

And I would ask smart people to argue with me, smart people to agree with me, whatever it may be. But the actual writing of the strategy, the putting it down on a piece of paper was just me. And then I would just test each of the hypothesis spots. So there are tons of moments in a strategy where you are guessing. right? You are making that educated guess. And the educated guess, for example, is if we launch in February, right,

Carter 23:43

right, can we sustain money through, you know, to the end of October? You know, so you have to test that idea. Well, let's how do we marshal our spending? How do we make sure that we're not overspending? So we put in unbelievably strict spending controls. No one could spend any money on this campaign over $500 unless

Carter 24:04

unless it was me.

Carter 24:06

Like no one could spend money because if we had a director of communication spending money and a director of logistics spending money and a director of whatever, we would have spent too much. And it was such a long period, we would have run out of money.

Carter 24:19

So each of the strategy gets written by me.

Carter 24:22

It is then controlled largely

Carter 24:24

largely by me but

Carter 24:26

but the trick is we had 80 people in our campaign cabinet that each needed to feel like they understood the campaign strategy and that they owned their piece of the campaign strategy so you allow variance within the strategy structure and you allow them control within that within that strategy structure so

Zain 24:44

so carter you know i love you um you're

Zain 24:47

you're it's hurt this is gonna this is when it hurts this feels like this is when it hurts but cory and i have worked with you professionally uh you are more strategy less manager in a sense from at least what we've experienced yeah

Zain 24:58

how did you balance that i mean you literally had the role campaign manager how did you bet and like did you offload this work i'm sorry i'm getting into process questions but who gives a shit this is what interests me how did you what

Zain 25:10

what what portion of your life was actually doing the phone call stress testing the ideas and what portion of your life was actually managing managing all these people? Because having been in your shoes, and even from what you're saying, done it very differently, where my brain was almost entirely on the people side and a little bit of the calm side.

Zain 25:30

What was your sort of division of labor like in your head? I'm curious.

Carter 25:33

I empowered a lot of really good people. And then I got saved by a woman named Trina Herdman, who is a school trustee, who's been around campaigns forever. And Trina came in very early and took on kind of the the logistics

Carter 25:48

logistics swing uh i don't know how to describe it except to say that whenever i created a logistics problem which was always trina solved the logistics problem every time i

Corey 26:00

i feel like she and i should start a support group yeah for sure

Corey 26:03

yeah you guys that was my fucking job at h and k yeah so so

Carter 26:05

so i would say you know we're going to do this by this date and there'd be people running around in tears and trina would be like okay here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to manage it. And the actual logistics would be taken care of by, like I say, we had 80 core cabinet

Carter 26:25

cabinet volunteers and 1,200 overall volunteers. And we had such a large number of those by June. Like we were talking 800 volunteers in June.

Carter 26:36

we had a lot lot of people to put out on these tasks, but it would never have happened without the logistics leadership of Trina and the merry, I don't want to name everybody, but there was a merry band of people who just made shit happen.

Carter 26:53

All women, by the way. Can I just say this? One of the things that made the campaign work, 75% women in the donor class, 75% women in the volunteer class, and in the actual management of the campaign side i'd say it was probably closer to 85

Corey 27:10

so carter you talked a bit about name recognition you mentioned it in passing here but i remember those first conversations with you probably our best documentation is you talking about the need to build that because i think there were some early numbers or some public poll that showed people just didn't know who

Corey 27:25

who jody was outside of her ward i assume um and that you saw step one really is just almost blanketing the city with her name. Yeah. Right?

Carter 27:35

Well, and we were very lucky in that regard. You know, I think anybody who's seen the design for it. And

Carter 27:40

And can I just

Zain 27:40

just also ask you, while you go on the design and the brand that you chose for her, I'm really curious if you can just add that together with your answer here. So

Carter 27:48

So I'll start with the design, Corey, and then I'm coming back to you and kind of how we positioned the actual name recognition. Ignition. The design was done by a woman named Crystal Reynolds, who isn't experienced in political campaigns, but is a good friend of Jotu's. And she came on board. And she was one of like, three people who got paid on the campaign, like a very small team of us that got cash because she had to get paid, because she was producing such, you know, she was producing something we were essentially taking an in-kind donation so she got paid if we if we didn't pay her it would have been problematic she

Carter 28:29

she designed this based on a conversation with jyoti which said basically you know the fight club logo with the pink fight club on the black bar

Zain 28:38

bar soap yeah that

Carter 28:40

that was jyoti's starting point for what she wanted this campaign to feel like and

Carter 28:44

and so crystal Crystal went back and designed a campaign around the colors black, yellow, and

Carter 28:52

and pink with white, right?

Carter 28:54

right? Kind of a white, a sprinkling of white through it. And I think that any campaigner in any political party or any other environment would tell you that those campaign colors are completely verboten.

Carter 29:06

You cannot put together a campaign that looks like this.

Carter 29:10

But the way that she made it work, it

Carter 29:13

it was absolutely stunning. You know, I'm just showing pieces to the guys because no one else is going to see them. It's a podcast, Stephen. Yeah, it's a

Zain 29:20

a podcast. Jesus fucking Christ. When

Carter 29:21

When are we going

Zain 29:21

going on video? When are we

Carter 29:22

we going on video?

Zain 29:25

God. Because the design was

Carter 29:30

Didn't we buy, you know, like, never mind.

Carter 29:33

How much does it cost for Squadcast Premium, Corey? Like, you're made of money.

Corey 29:37

I don't know. I mean, nickels.

Carter 29:40

So we got this

Carter 29:41

this great design, like a spectacular design, and then we just deployed it. And we were broke.

Carter 29:47

broke. So the way that we deployed it was through large signs. Found a couple loopholes in the bylaws that enabled us to put up signs in May and June. And we deployed 80 signs through four wards at a time, basically for three sets of two weeks each. So a six-week period, we deployed 80 signs. we had tremendous volunteer support on that and

Carter 30:18

was fantastic because our name recognition went from very low to

Carter 30:23

um not high by any stretch of the imagination but a starting point enough people knew her name that if her name came up in a conversation around the water cooler people would want someone around that water cooler granted there were no water coolers at the time but but someone would say, yeah, I've heard of her.

Carter 30:41

Yeah, I see. I've seen her.

Carter 30:43

So that kind of gave us a big bump.

Zain 30:47

Talk to me about the brand positioning. When I've called in our internal conversations like this feminist punk rock star sort of look in some photos, the very like bold,

Zain 30:58

assertive, perhaps even if I can use a term, intimidating look

Zain 31:02

that some might say. I remember in some of our initial discussions when you showed us a brochure i was like okay like that's a choice like it's legitimately not your standard let's just pick the middle lane brochure and look and so the photography the look i'm really curious about that what was

Zain 31:20

was it the candidate was it a combination the candidate and the team what kind of led to this positioning

Zain 31:25

positioning and this this this this um angle that you chose well

Carter 31:30

well the pose that was probably the the one we called the power pose pose was the most used on the campaign. It has Jyoti with her hands, you know, her knuckles kind of touching. And if you go to the website, you can find these these pages. That power pose very unique in politics. And again, not something that you would necessarily see on

Carter 31:49

on a male candidate. You know, working with female candidates is a different challenge. Women are hard on other women and women are, um, subject

Carter 32:03

subject to very misogynistic views from men. So with both of those things, uh, putting together something that was powerful, but yet feminine. So we didn't look like she was, you

Carter 32:15

you know, trying to be a man, uh, you know, was a really, really delicate balance. Um, and Barbara who took the photographs, she just nailed it. We, we have these photos that that show femininity but also show absolute strength and power and we were we were never afraid of that word power we wanted to show that

Carter 32:37

that she was seeking power and that she had power and that she was willing you know she was someone that you could trust with power at every step of the race so

Corey 32:49

so talk to me about

Corey 32:51

about the other guy Jeremy

Corey 32:53

Jeremy Farkas I'm not asking you to like run a hit piece on him but talk to me about your strategy relative to his strategy because and i guess maybe to build out my question from earlier like how much of this was luck that your strategy didn't change so much in 10 months when

Corey 33:08

when you think about a campaign and let's think about it even in military terms like when we think about campaign you

Corey 33:14

you don't often set something and then your quote-unquote enemy acts exactly the way you expect them to the entire way but the

Corey 33:22

the fact that you never really had to fundamentally change your strategy or

Corey 33:27

over that time like or but i mean this is almost my point like how did

Corey 33:31

did his reactions and how did kind of the thrust and perry change things as it went along or why didn't it because it didn't seem to at least from where i was sitting we

Carter 33:40

we only campaigned against jason kenney the entire campaign we

Carter 33:44

we we said jeremy farkas's name three times three times over the entire campaign i can't remember which days they were but there were exactly three times that the candidate uttered his name she did get a little bit more aggressive with him in debates um when it was you know the three especially when it was down to the three of them um jeff davison and and jeremy farkas um jeremy

Carter 34:09

jeremy was in a really powerful position from the start uh there was a group of people kind of left over from the bill smith era let's say that opposed Nahid Nenshi. So

Carter 34:19

So Jeremy immediately starts off with the, I

Carter 34:22

I oppose Nahid Nenshi vote, and

Carter 34:24

and let's call that 30%, right? That 30% was with him on day one, and it stayed with him all the way through. The problem that he had was his strategy for trying to capture votes outside of that was, you know, he didn't know exactly where the rest of them were.

Carter 34:44

you know, does he attack Nahid Nenshi? Does he not attack Nahid Nenshi? Does he focus on us? Does he try and keep us down? But

Carter 34:52

But what he wound up doing was trying to actually position himself as more a positive force. And that positive force never resonated. Because the people who were voting for him didn't actually want a positive force.

Zain 35:05

So can I ask you this? Yeah. What was an attack that

Zain 35:09

that you were afraid of that he never delivered? That if he had gone down this path, you would have been like, oh, fuck me. It could have been a messaging line. It could have been a tactic. But was there something, there's a few things in my mind, but I'm curious if there's anything in yours that if your chief opponent had gone down that path, you've been like, okay, we could be screwed if this resonates or if this works. I

Carter 35:32

I think if someone had put together a wedge around us versus Nenshi, we would have really been screwed.

Carter 35:38

If someone had put together, you know, the fight that occurred, you know, the fights that had occurred in council chambers between Nenshi and Gondek, we would have really had a problem because what

Carter 35:48

what we were doing is picking up the majority of Nenshi's vote

Carter 35:52

when we really weren't. I mean, his supporters used to call us Nenshi 2.0 and I'm like, frame it, put it in a fucking ad. That's fantastic. You know, like they hated Nenshi so much they assumed the rest of the audience hated Nenshi. But the rest

Zain 36:07

rest of the audience- Team Farkas, you mean? Yeah,

Carter 36:09

Team Farkas. Farkas supporters. Yeah.

Zain 36:12

Yeah. And they could have been available to, you know, I will tell you that as as, you know, and I've told you this privately, and I don't mind saying it publicly. I was one of the folks that came on late to your campaign and not even not even actually physically on your campaign to support your campaign in the 11th hour. And I was one of those people that may have been holding out for what I called a more progressive choice. Right. Because I was like, oh, it could happen with someone else, at least where I mark my ex. You'd always had my support as a friend. But as it related to values, I was looking for other folks. And I felt like there's There's a few people in those. But when I canvassed people in my network two weeks before the election, they'd already moved. Like, I was a late mover, right, in that final weekend. Like, I was one of the last people to be like, this is the choice. It's absolutely clear. This is what we need to do. So it did surprise me how quickly that migration happened, at least with a class of supporters in that arena. Corey, you wanted to jump in, maybe comment on that. Yeah,

Corey 37:04

Yeah, no, not on that. Although I think that's very true, Zane. And there were a number of people who had the same sentiments in my universe who were like, I don't know. I'm not sure. What else is there? And then when it really the rubber hit the road, it's like, I mean, to Stephen's point, it was the no to Farkas group. And they're like, well, fuck it. I mean, I

Corey 37:25

I picked Gondek over Farkas

Corey 37:29

you said something about the Farkas campaign that really flicked

Corey 37:33

flicked something on in my brain here, which is that he tried to be the positive guy. This is the guy who has voted no more

Corey 37:40

more consistently than basically anybody in council. He has been the opposition to Nenshi, by and large, for the last four years here. But then he decided almost to kind of give a smiling, more generic, more like Bill Smith conservatism, frankly, right?

Corey 38:00

that never seemed to land. You mean Bill Smith

Zain 38:01

Smith of 2017, like the pretty palatable

Corey 38:04

conservative? Yeah, exactly. Like, that's what he seemed to be shooting for. Or in some ways, it was like, all I need to do is be an optimized version of Bill Smith. And so I guess now I want to go in two different ways, but I'll just throw them both out there. One is, was he just fighting the last campaign, right? I mean, when you start thinking about the Nenshi 2.0 thing, which is kind of that classic error we always talk about. And the second is, when

Corey 38:26

when we talk about brand, I'll always say this about brand and not just in political context, because I do this for a day job too, right? Like brand has to be part grounded in reality and part aspirational. branding efforts at least right like you want to try to push a little bit further than where you are and that in turn makes you more like that you know it creates a bit of a virtuous cycle

Corey 38:44

but him being the positive guy and you know trying to flip it as i say yes to calgary with my no votes was just so bloody labored right

Corey 38:53

don't know i mean that's well maybe we'll do version two where we deconstruct the farkas campaign but i was really fascinated by that and i do go back to the thing like i found what i one of the things i found most remarkable about this campaign campaign, was that Farkas never seemed to make a play. Like he never made a move to

Corey 39:10

to kind of stop you from checking, you know, you think about a game of chess, like you were moving him into a corner, and he never made a big gambit to try to get out of it. And

Zain 39:17

And I think the strategy was pretty nakedly obvious, the coalescing of all the votes to one candidate against him. I think the whole mantra of Dr. No, and I mean, quite literally, the third party Farkno campaign at the end proved that that was his definition. But I'll let you jump in, Carter, before I editorialize myself. tough i

Carter 39:34

you know i think i also want to jump in on davison at some point too because he was the one that could have won and probably should have won this campaign um so we should probably get to him at some point too because i want to talk about oxygen and oxygen levels and what that means but the the yes no branding structure jeremy's a very good candidate jeremy's a very good person to speak to the media his videos were amazing he had no strategy he had had no understanding of what it actually took to build a winning election and that's why we beat him because if he'd said to your point about being about brand being in part reality and part aspirational if

Carter 40:13

if he'd been able to deconstruct a real political brand he

Carter 40:17

would have beat us in a landslide and the but the person who could have built the biggest political brand was

Carter 40:23

was jeff davison and that's the one that never took off and that's the one that i i'm really pleased that we didn't Yeah,

Corey 40:30

I got to jump in here because this is one of the things, like if you were to run the tapes on those conversations we had with you, Stephen, back in February and March, right? One of the things that I kept saying is I feel like the next mayor might come outside of council, right? That council has not been particularly popular in Calgary, if you look at it over the span of the last four years for sure. In the last year, I think fighting with the province, that's changed a bit of the dynamic there, because certainly the city has been more on side with the people of Calgary than the province has been, right? Especially in terms of public health here. But I

Corey 41:04

I really thought there was an opportunity for Farkas to run as the insider outsider. To say, yeah, I am the no vote. This council is broken. This is garbage. This is trash. But he

Corey 41:13

he didn't. And run against the administration.

Corey 41:16

Yeah. And the only time he did that was at the last moment when he voted against vaccine passports, which was insanely popular. Like, he ran the I'm a nice guy strategy all the way through the campaign until the real Farkas came out in that vote. And

Carter 41:31

And that's when we won.

Zain 41:33

agree. I think the other untapped potential that he had was, you know, Carter, I've talked to you about this often on the phone, which was the Olympics, right? The lesson we learned from the Olympics was that was not a left-right coalition. It was a top-bottom. If you were, you know, in the lower socioeconomic brackets of the city, you pretty much told the Olympics to go fuck themselves because you had shit to worry about that was not throwing a party. And we were congratulating ourselves during that campaign being like, look at this, we got like NDPers and like hardcore UC peers in the same room. There's no way this thing doesn't win. And I think it kind of showcased that there was a huge class divide. And that was something I expected Farkas to tap into extensively and often, especially considering, frankly, where he's come from geographically and the background. Like, I thought that was totally untapped potential, especially considering you're a candidate. Yes, well, a South Asian woman doesn't have the lived experience of perhaps someone from East Calgary, a very different sort of immigration and sort of educational trajectory in terms of that relatability. That was one element that honestly surprised me, even does now, that that was not a core part of the strategy. It

Carter 42:40

would have been really interesting if he'd referred to as Dr. Gondek the entire time. You know, like he had real opportunity to define her in her privilege and he chose not to. Again, just the fact that, you know, I don't think that there was a branding document on the other side the way there was a branding document on our side. But we constructed a brand for our candidate, and we then also constructed the brand that we wanted the other candidates to be seen in. And both of those things came true, right? And again, whether – I

Carter 43:09

I mean, really, we didn't worry too much about anybody beyond the top three, but we

Carter 43:15

we had brands all the way down basically to the top eight, and

Carter 43:19

and we could deploy if anybody ever got oxygen.

Zain 43:23

We'll jump into the Davison campaign in a second. But I know, Corey, do you think we've lost all of our non, let's just fuck, not even non-Alberta, non-Calgary listeners at this point? Oh, yeah.

Zain 43:32

yeah. It's a real possibility.

Zain 43:33

possibility. Yeah, perfect. Well, let's give them some content that

Zain 43:35

that could kind of bring them back home. Corey, did you know that Flair Airlines is tripling their fleet of airplanes, which means now with Flair Airlines, you can go less places more. Flair Airlines, let's

Zain 43:47

let's wait in the lounge. uh

Zain 43:51

carter uh let's talk about jeff davidson you said he should have won why should he have won to me he got 13 of the vote yeah okay jeff davidson and just maybe carter i'll let you describe them but to me the the simple definition of jeff davidson regularly

Zain 44:06

regularly scheduled programming was was how i described that guy just middle-aged white dude palatable a little bit of left a little little bit of right why

Zain 44:17

why why did you see him as such a huge threat uh and why didn't he he take off in your mind because

Carter 44:23

because we're coming because look at look at what's happening in alberta right now look at what's happening really in the in the city in the country but in especially in calgary we

Carter 44:30

we had the overachieving uh

Carter 44:33

uh over hyper intellectual nahad denchi for 11 years whose popularity you

Carter 44:39

know once he announced that he was leaving his popularity is soared but before Before he announced that he was leaving, his popularity was was waning.

Carter 44:48

And so there was an opportunity to kind of campaign against that elitism. And at the same time, you're

Zain 44:54

you're a candidate in some ways, kind of absolutely right.

Carter 44:57

right. We are the elite. We are, you know, Dr. Gondek, Dr. Nenshi. Which one do you choose right now? It's not Dr. Nenshi, ironically, but nonetheless, we'll just leave that alone. But, you know, the super intellectual, the super, you know, let me tell you why you're wrong kind of a candidate very easily could have been us. And the uber right wing, Jeremy Farkas, you know, clone of Jason Kenney was

Carter 45:25

just terribly unpopular as we're going through this campaign because Jason

Carter 45:32

Jason Kenney's terribly unpopular. I mean, there's a poll released today that says they've never seen numbers this bad for any government, like such a such a market drop. Well, why wouldn't you if you're Jeff Davison? Why wouldn't you come in as the old PCs of old, the happy middle, the middle warrior that's going to come in and say, I am neither this nor that. I am you. And

Carter 45:56

And if he'd done, I am neither them. I am not them or them. I am you and been the everyman. I mean, the data shows that people tend to vote very much for people who look sound. Isn't that

Zain 46:11

that what he tried to do in his

Corey 46:13

his defense? Isn't that exactly what he tried to do? I think it is. And this is an interesting point to me because you talk about that old PC brand, you talk about this happy warrior, not left, not right. A couple of

Corey 46:24

pretty base observations here, but let's toss them out. One, PCs lost, right? PCs got crushed in in 2015 they came in third place pcs were then destroyed and became part of the united conservative party so let's not pretend that anything was holding that organization together more than power um

Corey 46:42

and one of the problems the old pcs had was ethical failings and so when jeff davison got close to the line and and by some arguments passed the line with things like his work with third party advertisers to put his signs out there i think that reminded people of the old PCs in more ways than just the centrism, frankly.

Corey 47:00

But one of the things that I find really, really, really interesting about the Davison campaign, and maybe to your point about he should have won, is that, and it's tough for people to understand who are not in Calgary and sort of living that Calgary experience.

Corey 47:14

There was a, there was sort of a cast in Calgary that ran this city, ran this city for, I mean, honestly, since the 30s here.

Corey 47:22

Right. You know, personified by by stampede board personified by, you know, PC party membership, you know, there was a certain group of individuals who just sort of floated between, you know, the chamber, the stampede board, ranchman's club, when they were on their time off, like that was them. And they ran this town.

Corey 47:41

And they all went to Jeff Davison, like that, that establishment still exists. And that establishment all went to Jeff Davison.

Corey 47:48

they lost bad. And when you consider the number of guns they brought to that fight, it's

Corey 47:53

it's actually remarkable. And if I was them, I wouldn't be sleeping. Because what I saw was that both the right and the left rejected that. And maybe to Zane's point, it became more about top versus bottom. But they're

Corey 48:04

they're very clearly removed from where the political conversation is in this city right now.

Zain 48:08

now. But it's interesting to me, Carter, and I'll let you respond to that. But it's not like you were also not nervous about this group's political influence. And I'm not going to try to get you in hot water now, now that you've got a gig but i

Zain 48:21

recall you know you called me a lot during this campaign but the item and the issue you called me about the most was do

Zain 48:30

do you remember it starts with a c calgary stampede the

Zain 48:34

the stampede this was like you're walking on eggshells moment i thought i was the only one getting phone calls i see your stickies now there's like fucking 50 people on that list uh but but you were stress testing what your candidate does on the stampede more extensively at least from the calls i got You may tell me otherwise, that there's a different issue. But to me, that was a harbinger of power, money, optics, old boys club control. It's fascinating to me, because as much as Davison had them in his corner, and you knew that by that point, because he was in the race, it's not like you guys kind of said, fuck you to these people and moved on. So I'm kind of curious, I just thought I wanted to throw that in the mix, kind of as Corey's comments about, you know, old school power in Calgary, where it stands, maybe throwing this sort of example to you as well from our conversations. Yeah,

Carter 49:26

Yeah, so I mean, there's different points that you can lose at different times, right? So, you know, we were talking about that time I was at 9% and I was super happy. Then there's another time at 12% and I'm a little not happy. And then there's a time at, you know, 16 or 18 or whatever. Whatever the the June, July period was our worst period in in so far as us thinking about, you

Carter 49:48

you know, pushing a potentially

Carter 49:50

potentially negative point of view. You know, we didn't necessarily take on the stampede, although I'll tell you, they sure had their feelings hurt. We didn't take them on. We didn't take them on directly. we took them on at best indirectly and had davison's campaign decided that they were going to come out of the the gates guns a blazing that we you know those that month we would have lost and that's one of the reasons that you know all of those nervous phone calls that was my worst period of the of the campaign because i was calling everybody and basically saying you know what do you think what do you think i'm the scarecrow running around what do you think what are you hearing what do you think it

Zain 50:26

like that you know i think we had the same conversation three times and

Zain 50:30

and that's a change from six hours ago carter yeah i

Carter 50:33

i was freaking out because it was a difficult time it was a difficult and if jean if jeff davison had decided that he was going to campaign if jeff davison had decided that he was going to try and come after us in at the end though we were able to go after him because he had a tpa a third party advertiser that wound up spending all of his money for him like they paid for something that week or Or no, they did a joint fundraiser at that same time. And so we were able to kick him. And we were able to keep kicking him on that TPA until we got through the

Carter 51:07

the stampede problem. And that enabled us. So you'll note, we maybe mentioned Jeremy's name three times. We mentioned Jeff Davison's name every day from May the 12th from when he came into this race. Basically until he was done in mid-August. when we knew that he was when he was trapped in the in the low single digit or high single digits.

Zain 51:33

pull off a 2010 Nenshi here? Why

Zain 51:36

Why couldn't any? Because there were folks that tried. Right. They saw the field. They saw it, whether it was in May, June, July, either said there's no actual progressive candidate in the race. We can actually take this. There's a home for people that that. that why could no one pull off the, and let's actually crystallize what I mean by the Nenshi strategy, as Corey's mentioned earlier, right? Jump into third place, Thanksgiving weekend is the big weekend, you then kind of go from third to first, you have a big spike, kind of like the bump you guys experienced in the final 10 days, but it happens for the third place candidate. Why could no one pull off that template, Stephen?

Carter 52:13

Because it wasn't available to them this time.

Carter 52:16

Because everybody's always trying to do the campaign that came before, and

Carter 52:19

you can't do the campaign that you did before. So

Carter 52:22

So if September 1st is three weeks until there's a federal election, then being in third place on September the 1st no longer is relevant, right?

Carter 52:30

right? If the summer is locked, and I mean locked, no movement opportunities really available, then you really have to be... So September 1st to 20th, not available, no

Carter 52:40

no movement time, right?

Carter 52:41

right? So you have to be in a different position on June the 15th. So the relevant date shifted. Everybody thought, But, you know, Nenshi moved at Thanksgiving. Well, you're seeing the end game, right? You didn't see the setup. So chess, everybody looks at a chess game and says, oh, that's the last three moves. And they can see the end game. Chess is set up at the beginning, right? The first few moves, the opening salvo sets the tone for chess as it does in campaigns. When you set the tone of this is what the campaign is going to look like, this is who who the campaign is going to be that is set for us it was april may and june and i would argue for

Carter 53:22

for for nenshi it was also april may and june we got the hyper engaged for nenshi very very early we were winning polls

Carter 53:31

polls on reddit and polls on skyscaper forum very early because those people paid attention even calgary puck which had a political forum was all nenshi in in drink during whatever whatever week the flames lost the playoffs because that's i mean i don't know that they did but i'm just assuming because they're the flames um

Corey 53:52

well they didn't win so yeah so

Carter 53:56

we knew that we had those building blocks and then people see the october surprise and go holy shit october surprise how do they must have they must have spent a lot of money in october

Carter 54:08

No, you build the October surprise way earlier, and it was not available the way we built it in 2010. Couldn't be done. And watching, by the way, can I just tell you how much it aggravates me? Watching all these people run around and say, well, didn't you do it in 2010? Yeah, I was there. I seem to recall.

Carter 54:27

You can't do those tricks. I did those tricks. They're not available to you.

Zain 54:32

Corey, what do you got? I've got a couple more for Carter, but what do you got? But, you

Corey 54:37

really don't have a ton more, Zane, except to say this is kind of the third time you've done this. You've taken a candidate from single digits to victory. And

Zain 54:46

And you should be impressed with how I've done it. You know, one of the things we did was we had a phone bank, OK? And most days, not many people showed up to the phone.

Corey 54:54

No, no, no. Listen, I have an actual question here, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or maybe an observation is a better way to put it. But one of the things that I found really quite interesting just in the last week, right, is the number of people who've said, well,

Corey 55:07

well, this was inevitable, right? And, you know, I do think that campaigns that are well-constructed are obvious. Wait, are people saying that?

Corey 55:13

Oh, I've heard that

Corey 55:15

about like half a dozen people. That like

Zain 55:16

like Gondek was going

Corey 55:17

to win, that this

Zain 55:17

this was going to

Corey 55:18

to be the template of the campaign,

Zain 55:19

coalesce the vote. Well,

Corey 55:21

not even that was the template. It's not like they're giving the strategic analysis there. It's like, yeah, I mean, Gondek was always going to win this thing. It was always going to be Farkas or Gondek, and it was always going to be Gondek, right? And that's just not my read of this thing at all. But I did want to ask you a bit about that, Stephen, because I also, you know, I've said too many nice things about you this podcast. I'm not going to pretend you're the genius. This will not continue in future. Yeah, no, I know. This is

Zain 55:45

is one and done.

Corey 55:46

done. Listen, you could easily read into this. This was supposed to be a 10-minute

Zain 55:49

-minute segment 56 minutes later, but okay. I think, you

Corey 55:52

you know, I think you also work with candidates. You pick candidates that are maybe good for the moment there, and I think that's part of it. But what's

Corey 55:58

what's your reaction to that? And like, how do you deal with that? How do you deal with kind of this sense that the strategy isn't really what matters? Because it's something I hear a lot, too. It's like, if a strategy is good enough, it seems obvious. And if it seems obvious, it's undervalued. And so, like,

Corey 56:15

like, where to from here? How are you going to make sure people, well, maybe it's not in your interest to make sure people know that the strategy mattered. but uh what

Corey 56:26

don't even have a question zane i guess i'm just talking about strategy no

Zain 56:28

no it's an interesting question i'm curious what what your what what your take is on that carter we're

Carter 56:33

we're on a podcast called the strategist everyone

Carter 56:36

everyone listening to it obviously strategy obviously

Carter 56:39

obviously yeah i mean the people who listen want to know what's right i mean especially if they made it 57 minutes into this podcast why

Carter 56:47

yeah i mean congratulations welcome to the end um we We, strategy

Carter 56:52

strategy matters only to those that need to know about the strategy, right?

Zain 56:57

in your campaign, everyone, you said everyone needed to know about the strategy. Sorry, I don't want to interrupt you there, but. But,

Carter 57:02

But, and so we had weekly meetings going through the strategy, telling everybody what was going to happen. A lot of campaigns close the door between the strategists and the operators. It makes no sense at all because how are you supposed to do the strategy if you don't understand the strategy? so we continued over and over and over and over again to emphasize what was happening in each week and what the bigger picture was because that's the best way to do it and if no one values the strategy at the end that's fine that's fine because there will continue there were 28 candidates for mayor 28 candidates only one won right

Carter 57:39

how do you win at the end of the day and this is one one of the things that i liked in the in my cycle of you know 2010 2011 2012 and then now 2021

Carter 57:49

every time the the only thing that is common between all four of those races is that we had a strategy and we implemented to it and you you forget about my joe clark victory in 2000 which was also single digits to victory i

Corey 58:01

i think joe clark forgets about the joe clark no

Carter 58:02

no one ever remembers joe

Zain 58:05

carter um quickly on two things as we as we land the plane which, by the way, if it never takes off, you never need to land Flair Airlines. Carter, third parties, how important were the third-party TPAs, the PACs, the Calgary's Future, the folks? I look at them because of the investment that they made in this campaign. You have a progressive council, so was there a correlation there? I'm curious from your campaign manager's perspective, right? Of course, you can do a bit of punditing, but from your perspective, How influential and how welcome and how useful was the support of some of these groups from what you saw, observed and felt on the inside?

Carter 58:45

Talk about groups that need strategies. Holy shit. They were horrible. And

Carter 58:50

And I mean, like, really, truly horrible. They didn't have a fundraising strategy. They didn't have a fun spending strategy. They just simply thought they could pick, you know, candidates that fit their mold. They were absolutely fucking terrible. and you

Carter 59:07

know to to see this

Carter 59:10

this develop this way i mean next time if you guys aren't running a pack i'm going to be very disappointed in you um because apparently people will give money to absolute morons all the time and then they will that

Carter 59:21

that money will be pissed away i think that it was i think that the packs or the tpas were i thought i had them in my strategy as this kind of big unknown of what would happen in september and october i actually thought it would lock in in september and october i could not have been more wrong i totally emphasize so

Zain 59:39

so what did you think would lock in like i thought that they would spend they would outspend

Carter 59:42

outspend each other right like all of a sudden the left is spending the right is spending everybody's locking it in the the no one would be able to move because all this spending would come in nothing could be further from the truth i totally overemphasize or overestimated how much impact they would have and uh they really had exactly zero i'm

Zain 1:00:05

okay i'm fascinated by that despite the fact that some of the candidates that they supported came out on top well

Carter 1:00:11

well i mean if you roll dice every once in a while you're gonna hit a seven okay

Zain 1:00:15

okay carter last question for you that i have and cory i don't know if you've got one to to close it off after me but when

Zain 1:00:21

when did your candidate save you because we've We've been talking about you and the strategy and, of course, the candidate.

Zain 1:00:27

Anecdotally, or even like at one point, I always find that in these things that you're pushing the candidate and the team to do something. When's the time you couldn't do something and the candidate may have actually walked you back and it was helpful and it was useful and it was strategic?

Carter 1:00:45

Best candidate I've ever worked with.

Carter 1:00:47

And I'm not just saying that because she's my boss now. although i think it kind of hard though race i'm just throwing it out there she's

Zain 1:00:54

she's um very bold race on day one that's the white man that's very bold south asian woman for a raise on day what day minus three of the job i don't

Carter 1:01:03

start till monday i

Carter 1:01:05

i can't get fired i don't even fucking work there i'm

Carter 1:01:08

i'm just throwing that out there anyways i

Corey 1:01:09

i i mean uh not getting hired and getting fired is kind of semantics you know the big difference is you won't get severance both Both have happened

Carter 1:01:16

happened to me, ironically.

Carter 1:01:20

she was a great candidate. And I think the reason that she was a great candidate is she was a great backroomer. So she started off in the campaign management role. So

Carter 1:01:28

So she'd done fundraising. She'd done campaign organizing. She knew what she needed to do as a candidate. With

Zain 1:01:35

With all respect to our mayor-elect, that seems like a horrible candidate in the sense of someone who's had experience in the backroom. Did she not meddle?

Carter 1:01:43

No, not at all. because

Carter 1:01:45

we had a great relationship she

Carter 1:01:47

she would say to me this is what i want and i would say yes and it goes back to even that branding decision right the the brand of the black and the pink and the yellow she came to us after the first brochure and said you

Carter 1:01:59

you heard me right

Carter 1:02:01

right you listened you produced what i wanted you to produce that's the the sign that the campaign is doing what the candidate wants and when you can establish that trust that trust is the the key between the campaign and the candidate and every day we would chat there were days that were tense there were days that that she wanted me like especially around the stampede um i was very very nervous and she was much more steadfast on what she wanted to do which did not mean that she was without nerves or that she didn't have questions i mean these were very very big moments in hindsight they kind of didn't matter but at

Carter 1:02:38

at that time you don't know right could have been ending a campaign Could have been ending the campaign right then.

Carter 1:02:44

But she and I always came to consensus. And if

Carter 1:02:49

we didn't come to consensus, then generally speaking, we're at least close enough that when I caved, I didn't feel like I was caving.

Zain 1:02:59

we're gonna leave our headlines there moving on to our final segment yes this is this is all we did today this

Zain 1:03:05

this is supposed to be 10 fucking minutes uh our over under in our lightning round uh cory i'm gonna start with you and you'll see why for obvious reasons over under on six months uh the time stephen carter lasts in his new job

Zain 1:03:18

uh push uh push uh carter over under on six months what are you betting on yourself

Carter 1:03:26

I'm under for sure.

Zain 1:03:29

Carter, overrated, underrated, chiefs of staff?

Carter 1:03:32

Overrated. You can totally do without them.

Zain 1:03:37

Corey Hogan, overrated or underrated, chiefs of staff?

Zain 1:03:40

Oh, overpaid for sure.

Zain 1:03:42

We'll leave it there. Congratulations, Carter. Congratulations to Jyoti Gondek. That's a wrap on episode 948 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan. Hopefully, he fucking leaves. Stephen Carter. We'll see you next time.

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