In my first few campaigns, I quickly learned that my forte was ensuring the ground game was operational, and as efficient and effective as possible. This meant that I was tasked with directing the resources allocated to finding votes, and ensuring supporters got out to vote. It also meant leaving the air war (advertising, media, brochures, personal outreach) to others.
At the same time, I joined a club of women who did all the work but got very little credit. The candidate was always a man and the senior campaign titles were given to high-profile men in the party and the community. They would come to the office for a meeting, make the decisions and leave it to the women in the room to execute them. And we did. Maybe we grumbled a bit or rolled our eyes, but we knew we were best positioned to do the actual work. As strong, committed Liberals, what could be more important? Certainly not our individual egos.
This was the point of my career where I first learned the phrase “ivory tower.” We’d joke about the men in their ivory tower calling the shots. It was an odd juxtaposition for me because at the end of the day, there was never any question in my mind who was truly in charge to make things happen. And every man involved knew that it would be a serious mistake to upset the formidable Anne Dmetriuc. If you had any ambition at all in local politics, you stayed on her good side.
Lesson: If you’ve found your passion, plot out the journey and don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
When David Peterson was elected leader of the Ontario Liberal Party in 1982, I was working for Liberal Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) Herb Epp in his constituency office. He was the epitome of a middle-aged, entitled, white male politician. He was sexist and chauvinistic—he used to leave his used coffee mug in the “Out” tray, for god’s sake—although he seemed unaware of it. But I was grateful for the job because I learned something new every day, and I got to do politics on the side.
At the same time, I became a Liberal volunteer organizer for the southwest, where most of the thirty-four Liberal seats were located (the caucus was often referred to as the “southwestern rump”), and I generally got my marching orders from Vince Borg, Peterson’s executive assistant. During this time, I was also elected vice-president for organization for the provincial party. At twenty-four years old, my reputation as a political organizer was beginning to take shape.
In December 1983, I took three weeks away from the office and worked in a by-election in Stormont–Dundas–Glengarry, deep in the heart of eastern Ontario. We didn’t have a hope in hell of winning but we wanted to send the signal that the Liberals were ready to fight for every riding. On a personal level, I wanted folks to know I was prepared to do what was needed for the party, including moving to a riding far away from home just before Christmas.
About six months later, in spring 1984, having decided to switch jobs and leave my marriage, I reached out to Vince and told him I wanted to continue working in politics—which meant either moving to Toronto or Ottawa. I gave him right of first refusal. I was thrilled when he called me back a few days later and offered me a job at Queen’s Park. In that moment I knew my passion for politics would become the foundation of my professional career.
Lesson: Make your mark on a single campaign and take it from there. You don’t need to be at the Centre to get noticed. Do a good job and the Centre will notice you.
With Anne, I worked provincial campaigns supporting Harry Worton in 1975, 1977 and 1981. Those campaigns did not require much work because Harry didn’t really believe in spending a lot of money. He basically ran his campaign from his kitchen table and spent his time visiting farmers door to door. He won by large margins based on his solid reputation for being available to anyone in the community who needed his help. We also worked federal campaigns for Frank Maine when he was elected MP in 1974 and when he was defeated in 1979. We were thrilled to elect Jim Schroder in 1980 after Pierre Trudeau had again taken the helm of the Liberal Party. We lost in 1984.
During those campaigns, lessons came in many forms. During the federal campaign in 1984, Guelph was hosting a huge rally for John Turner, who had succeeded Pierre Trudeau as prime minister. We decided to use the public area in the downtown Eaton Centre, which turned out to be a huge mistake. I was at the back entrance waiting for Prime Minister Turner to arrive. Over the radio, a voice said, “Pat, we need you at the front of the building.” Responding that I was not able to get there at that moment, they continued: “A nuclear cruise missile has just been brought in through the front doors. We don’t know what to do.”
I’ve had some strange things said to me over my years in politics but that one is near the top. Leaving the advance people to manage the prime minister’s arrival, I sprinted to the front. There it was: a massive papier-mâché cruise missile being held high by a member of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG) whom I knew from university. He and his colleague were two of the tallest men I had seen in my life and they passed the missile back and forth effortlessly between them, holding it more than six feet in the air. Being five-foot-three, I was forced to look up at them. They smiled, looking down at me like some hobbit. I was not smiling, giving it my best effort to hector, beg and threaten—to no avail. In the end we had no choice but to bring in Prime Minister Turner through the protest. We tried to block the camera shot with balloons, but it made the nightly news. It was a tour fail and I was responsible for it. There were tough lessons that day and I’ve never forgotten them.
Lesson: Tough losses early in your political career teach you one thing above all others: to never take anything for granted.
I ran my first by-election, held on December 13 in 1984, in the riding of Wentworth North. The title of campaign manager was held by someone locally and I was the senior organizer assigned by the party. Despite being twenty-eight years old, I had been involved in more campaigns that anyone locally. The candidate was Chris Ward, a popular, young, up-and-coming local mayor. The seat had been held for the previous nine years by Liberal Eric Cunningham, and in theory we should have easily held the riding. However, at that time David Peterson was an unknown and the consensus of the mainstream media was that he could never win the upcoming general campaign; the Conservatives would continue to hold government for a long time to come.
It was a critical by-election. We lost by 169 votes. The loss hurt on so many levels. Seeing it as a clear message that they could continue to hold government, the smug PCs loved that the media deemed the win “Bill Davis’s gold watch,” given that he was retiring before the next election. There was some solace in the fact that Premier Davis never got to wear that gold watch; PC MPP Ann Sloat never took her seat in the legislature because she was defeated by Chris Ward a few months later in the May 1985 general election.
Losing the Wentworth North by-election defined my entire approach to ground organization for the rest of my career. It was an organizational failure, given the narrow margin that represented less than one vote per poll. I never pretended otherwise. I made a critical mistake that I never made again. Chris convinced me that we didn’t need to pull the vote in his own backyard, the community of Troy. His neighbours and friends would be there for him and would vote. As resources were limited, I trusted his view and focused the pull elsewhere. In hindsight, if we had put an effort into pulling Liberal supporters in the area where Chris lived, we’d have won. His neighbours were no different than any other voter and we failed to get them out.
My absolute love of by-elections was ingrained from that moment forward. They became a major passion and I worked on as many of them as I possibly could. I long held the belief that every riding was worth fighting for, every election worth making the effort to win. Even if the riding was a longshot, a by-election provided the opportunity to grow the base by identifying our vote. Liberals come from all over the province to participate. We’d train people, try new approaches to reach voters and test