Advertisement

Introducing Tom Mulcair

Canada's opposition New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair arrives at the 2015 Canadian Screen Awards in Toronto, March 1, 2015. REUTERS/Mark Blinch (CANADA - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT POLITICS)

The NDP wants you to know that Tom Mulcair has a heart.

The party also wants you to know that he’s a family man, that he grew up the second oldest in a household of 10 siblings and that he talks to his wife Catherine pretty much every day, about pretty much everything, either in person or on the phone. Mulcair’s team probably wouldn’t mind if you knew the NDP leader has a sense of humour, too.

If Canadians are familiar with Mulcair, they probably see him as an effective opposition leader or as a feisty fighter in the House of Commons. But that’s not enough to him to 24 Sussex. An effective campaign to soften the NDP leader’s image is considered essential to his quest to become prime minister.

But an extensive, behind-the-scenes look at Mulcair in an in-depth interview this past weekend with Lloyd Robertson is just one step the NDP leader needs to win hearts, minds and votes from coast to coast. The party hasn’t picked up any seats in recent byelections and have lost a number of MPs to defections and floor crossings. Mulcair doesn’t have the pull, and doesn’t seem to instill the same sense of inspiration in others, as late NDP leader Jack Layton.

“Mulcair is a new leader in his first federal election campaign,” Lawrence LeDuc, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, tells Yahoo Canada News. “He needs much more exposure to become known nationally, particularly exposure outside the parliamentary setting.”

“The program helps, but it’s only a start,” he continues, speaking about the piece on CTV’s W5..

That kind of coverage, LeDuc adds, needs to be sustained by additional positive exposure over the coming months.

Nik Nanos, of Nanos Research, says softening Mulcair’s image is an important part of the NDP’s election strategy, but it’s incomplete just on its own.

“One of the things Tom Mulcair has to do is to have, what I’ll say, a signature policy objective, something that people can easily associate with him so that they know if he was ever to be prime minister, what he would try to do.”

The party has started to roll out policy planks for an NDP election campaign — national childcare, tax breaks for small businesses, raising the minimum wage for federal workers — but Mulcair has to “stake out a clear position that is different from the prime minister and ideally from [Liberal leader Justin] Trudeau, in order to add some policy colour to his brand,” Nanos says.

National exposure a must

Mulcair is well known in Quebec, Nanos adds, so the real challenge is getting positive recognition in Ontario, and west of Ontario particularly.

Summa Strategies’ Robin MacLachlan agrees, telling Yahoo Canada News the weekend’s W5 story is not so much about softening the leader’s image, but more about introducing Mulcair to people outside of the Ottawa bubble.

Canadians have had years to get a sense of who Prime Minister Stephen Harper is, and have also known Trudeau, the son of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott, for his entire life. “Outside of Quebec, they’re only just getting to know [Mulcair],” MacLachlan says. “That’s still a challenge, but also an opportunity for the NDP.”

He adds that voters like to vote for image, but also for a set of values. So knowing Mulcair, for example, comes from a big family with “middle-class roots” and has been married to Catherine for 40 years, is one way to connect his identity with the value statements he’s making leading up to the election.

It’s essentially, MacLachlan says, a “politicians are people too” strategy. The NDP has only a few months left to see if that strategy bears any political fruit.

Nanos adds Mulcair can probably be successful at reaching a personality brand that’s more appealing than the prime minister, who tends to be a little more divisive.

“But how do you compete against...the celebrity quality of Justin Trudeau? That’s more difficult.”