The role of the Campaign Manager

For a campaign to be a success, you need to have a really great Campaign Manager. The role of the campaign manager is vast, and he or she is the person who calls the shots in any campaign. A good campaign manager spends all day, every day during the campaign period with the candidate to ensure that he or she stays on message. They set up the offices, organize staff, and act as the go to person.

I've come to judge the success of a campaign based on how well the campaign manager performs. In the case of Simcoe Grey all of the parties have a campaign manager and what's called a CFO. The CFO controls the money as is considered by Elections Canada as the official agent for the candidate. The CFO and Campaign Manager usually work very closely together before, during and after the campaign.

Most campaigns so far have offices set up in the riding and it's recommended that you have an office in the south end of the riding and the north end of the riding.

The Conservatives have 2 offices with one in Collingwood and the other in Alliston.
The Independant Conservative also has 2 offices with one in Collingwood and the other in Alliston right near the other Conservative candidate.
The Liberals have 3 offices, with one in Collingwood, one in Wasaga Beach, and the other in Alliston.
The Greens have 1 office in Creemore, the NDP I believe have an office in Elmvale. As far as the other parties I'm not sure if they even have offices set-up as of yet.

As we are coming to the end of week two, I have to say that I'm not impressed with the way a couple of campaigns have been set-up and running so far. I won't name which campaigns, but if you as a voter are in sync with politics in our riding, I'm sure you can figure it out quite fast. Now I know that most, if not all campaigns rely on donations and that's the job of the Campaign Manager and CFO to rattle the base of the party's support in the riding and get them to donate and help out during the campaign. But it's not just about the money, it's about making sure that the candidate is out knocking on doors, meeting with business leaders, and getting the party's message out to each and every voter.

A recent local poll conducted by my fellow blogger in Collingwood - Scoop, had the Leitch camp in the lead followed by the Guergis camp in second, and the Smardenka camp in a distant third. While I feel it's too early in the race to call this a win for Leitch, I think all of the other parties need to see this as a wake up call and get cracking. With the vote split on the right with 2 Conservatives running, this is the best time for the Smardenka camp to come right up the centre and take this riding away from the Conservatives. If one of the 2 Conservatives win, I for one would blame it on the Campaign Manager, but again that's me.

Until next time!