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Pre-campaign campaign begins at pancake breakfasts, summer festivals

Pre-campaign campaign begins at pancake breakfasts, summer festivals

With a federal election campaign and its pesky spending limits just a few months away, stampede and strawberry festival organizers beware: you’re about to become very popular with politicians.

With Parliament adjourned for the summer, the pre-campaign campaign is getting underway.

But in these days of sterile news conferences and a prime minister’s own tightly controlled personal news channel, mixing with the unwashed masses can be a fraught endeavour.

Do you kiss the babies? Wear the hat?

“You’re going to see a lot of politicians flipping pancakes over the course of the 10 days of (Calgary) Stampede,” says William McBeath, Manning Centre for Building Democracy’s director of training and marketing. “It’s the time of the year when candidates and elected officials go out and don aprons and start flipping burgers and it can seem a little … clichéd but they do serve a few important purposes.”

Summer is always a chance for elected representatives to get back to their ridings and talk with voters. When it comes on the eve of an election campaign expected to begin in September, it’s vital.

“This is a great way of reconnecting with a base and in an election year this is even more important because you’re going to be heading into a campaign and you need to have a good, solid base of people with you as you start knocking on doors and putting up signs,” McBeath tells Yahoo Canada News.

Of course, public events can go wrong.

As Elizabeth May so deftly demonstrated during her awkward speech at the press gallery dinner earlier this year, one woman’s joke can be another’s rambling foot-in-mouth.

Gilles Duceppe, who has emerged from retirement to again lead the Bloc Québécois, also learned this the hard way when a visit to a cheese factory during his 1997 federal campaign was cheesier than he’d hoped. Photos of the Bloc leader wearing a plastic hair net was a tasty snack for political cartoonists.

One of the most famous photo op fails in the annals of Canadian politics was Conservative leader Robert Stanfield.

During the 1974 federal election the would-be prime minister took a minute to throw a football with a campaign team member. Photos of Stanfield awkwardly fumbling a ball appeared in the next day’s newspapers – a fumble that is largely attributed with costing Stanfield the election.

McBeath has some advice for electoral hopefuls: keep the speeches short and be authentic.

“You see people coming to Calgary Stampede who have clearly never worn western wear in their life and they do tend to stick out a bit when they try it just for this event,” he says.

They should have a photographer at hand to take pictures with supporters and voters, and email photos to them afterwards.

“And try not to drop the hamburger when they’re flipping it,” he says.

Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University, says judging from his email inbox, the New Democrats are already on the hustings.

“[Tom] Mulcair was never particularly adept at that down-home communication,” Meredith says. “Somebody’s really been working on this guy because he’s coming out all warm and fuzzy.”

Warm and fuzzy has never been a strength of Prime Minister Stephen Harper or his Conservatives, Meredith suggests.

“I don’t think the guy has scored in a while on the kiss the babies and tossing hamburgers,” Meredith tells Yahoo Canada News.

Rather, Harper’s camp has relied on positioning his opponents as the “evil” alternative.

“I think that might be wearing a little thin,” he says.

McBeath says candidates should take advantage of the months ahead.

“Events like these barbeques are a great way of energizing and motivating a team of volunteers to get out there and knock on those doors and make those phone calls and stuff those envelopes and those important things that make all the difference in the world when an actual campaign starts,” he says.

Twitter and Facebook are fine new tools but votes are won one-on-one, he says.

“At the end of the day I think there’s still a role for a good, old-fashioned social event where people get together, have some fun and get to meet the candidate in an informal environment.”