These were fearless, determined women who got results. I was lucky to have such amazing role models who had a direct impact on me. I learned the value of being mentored and tried to emulate them when people turned to me for support.
Lesson: Working in politics is a wildcard. Be prepared to love it or leave it.
Politics is a blood sport and it either chews you up and spits you out or it hooks you. And once hooked, there’s no middle ground. It’s likely to be the most exhilarating experience of your career. I truly believe there is no life like it. As much as possible, people looking to work as political staff should understand what the position entails before they take the job. A big part of it is knowing how the role is meant to work with that of the civil servant, a party representative and an elected politician. Political staff work to balance the competing needs and beliefs of each group and often play the role of mediator. The ability to search for a compromise is essential.
At the federal and provincial levels, if you work for a politician, you work for a political party. That reality can cause confusion at times. If you take a role in politics that is paid by government, including one in a legislative assembly, you will have a political role as well as a government/legislative role. Our system is based on electing a political party and as such, elected officials have political obligations. Political staff are the ones who make sure those obligations are considered and, where possible, realized.
Among the most critical things political staff must understand is the role of civil servant who serves the government in power. Their primary responsibility is to provide politicians with their absolute best advice based on many factors including experience, research, historical context, societal impacts and financial considerations. The best advice always includes options, delineating the pros and cons of each proposal. Politicians tend to be more suspect when the civil service puts before them a single choice. As a chief of staff to a minister, I regularly sent back briefing notes or proposals because they were too narrow in scope.
One of my favourite encounters of this nature happened when I was chief of staff to Ken Black, minister of tourism and recreation. Fairly close to the 1990 election, I took a direct call from the minister of finance, Robert Nixon, who gave me clear marching orders. I was to oversee a process to ensure a significant sum of money was quickly distributed across the province. I knew from my political work we were moving toward an early election call and I understood the urgency.
I asked the deputy minister, Blair Tully, for a list of project recommendations from ministry staff. I told him the amount but asked for options to allow me to make choices. He had been around long enough to know my intent was to apply a political lens to the decisions. I had the list within a few days; it was more than one hundred pages in length. Each project was priced individually but there was no total. I decided to add up the amount of the projects listed. It was for the exact amount of money available for distribution—meaning there were no decisions for me to make. More than annoyed, I returned to the deputy’s office to make the point that I had asked for a list of options but instead got only the ministry’s picks.
The deputy turned to the assistant deputy minister responsible for the list and with a chuckle said, “See? I told you she wouldn’t fall for it.” He reached across his desk and handed me a second list—one with plenty of choices. Part of me knew I should be mad at the ministry’s attempt to control the outcome, but I actually just thought it was ballsy—and clearly I had a passed a test.
Lesson: Sometimes the toughest environments are where you learn the most, but be prepared to accept your limits.
In 1990, eight years into my career, I signed up to support Paul Martin in his run for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada at the leadership convention held on June 23. I learned an immense amount during that race, and it set me up to be a lead organizer for the Lyn McLeod leadership campaign in 1991–92. The Martin leadership was an uphill battle and I gained direct experience with hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. The effort to win delegates against Jean Chrétien’s formidable forces was like nothing I’d ever witnessed before.
It was during that campaign that I came to realize what it meant to challenge demanding, angry men who were set on having it their own way. You took their direction or you were slapped down. It was high risk to disagree with them, but my own Italian temper and sense of right and wrong put me in the crosshairs more often than was healthy. I was called “bitch” and “fucking dyke,” told to shut up and ordered to do what I was told. I was laughed at and mocked. Through the frustration and tears I continued, unwilling to give in. But I came close to leaving a number of times.
I worked full-out and I got results, using my personal political network to win Martin delegates in ridings where it was not expected. I was earning respect, and I wanted to prove I had what it takes to operate in the trenches at that level. And I wanted Paul Martin to be prime minister.
Besides learning how to win on the front line, that campaign influenced my view of how important it was to be honest with the ground troops. Perhaps the best example was the day of the leadership vote. While we awaited the results of the first (and it turns out, only) ballot, senior organizer John Webster was speaking directly to organizers on the floor through our radios. He kept saying we had the momentum going into the second ballot and to be sure our delegates did not leave early. As I looked around the floor, it was clear we had lost. The party was organizing a row of people (called a “love tunnel,” in tour terms) to guide the new leader to the stage. When I told John that over the radio, he told me to shut up and let him provide the direction. It always stayed with me that a senior organizer would expect us to ignore what we were seeing with our own eyes.
Lesson: Politics will always be there. You will be better at it if you get some experience outside of the bubble of government or partisan politics. You can come and go as opportunities are presented, but it’s good to have a fallback. The instability of politics is best offset by knowing why you are there.
By some point in my early 30s, the word “hack” had begun to make its way into my subconscious, given that I’d done nothing other than politics in my career. At the same time, the all-encompassing nature of politics was taking its toll. I’d be at work no later than seven thirty every morning and I’d work all day, balancing my government day job with my political work. I rarely left before seven thirty at night and dedicated all or part of most weekends to politics. Eventually I decided a career was important to me, and the sensible thing was to make sure I had a fallback should the Liberals not win re-election.
At the time I was working with Bob Wong and he suggested I go back to school. Despite all my experience as a manager, it remains true to this day that it’s tough to explain to people the skills you gain as a political staff person. With Bob’s encouragement, I decided to start my MBA part-time at York University. It was demanding and difficult to balance everything but by the time we lost government in 1990, I had five courses under my belt. It was a good thing, because it opened the door to an option I likely would not have had, which was to attend Queen’s University on a full-time basis and finish my MBA. I left the bubble at the end of September 1990 and spent the next few years applying all I learned in politics to life “in the real world.”
My departure occurred following the defeat of the majority Liberal government of David Peterson, when we fell to Bob Rae and the NDP on September 6, 1990. It was an unexpected outcome that resulted in the only NDP government in Ontario’s history, and a majority at that. David Peterson lost his home riding of London Centre to the NDP and resigned as leader that very night.
In the pre-writ and during the campaign, I worked in the central campaign as an assistant to Kathy Robinson, who was campaign chair. At her insistence I also managed the riding services package, which produced election campaign materials—signs, pamphlets and issues cards—for ridings, in an efficient and cost-effective manner. It was a lot of administrative work, but it was important.
Local campaigns always sense the ground shift ahead of the central campaign. We knew we were in trouble when ridings started to refuse material with David Peterson’s photo on it, which was pretty much every piece of literature. We literally forced candidates to accept them,