Federal Conservative House Leader John Reynolds has one big job between now and the next election: making sure history doesn't repeat itself. Speaking at the Victoria Tories' monthly breakfast meeting earlier today, Mr. Reynolds detailed some of his party's advanced plans to beat the Liberals. Included in those plans is the hiring of regional communications teams that will brief party leader Stephen Harper at 8:00 every morning. British Columbia and Ontario will get two communications officers apiece, while the Prairies, Quebec and the Maritimes will each have one. Interviews for those jobs have already been wrapped up, with the successful candidates being announced shortly.
The Conservatives will also be recruiting three part-time organizers in British Columbia, replacing a single full-time position previously filed by longtime Reform/Canadian Alliance fieldworker Brian Archer. Mr. Archer is now part of the B.C. Alternative movement which is looking to unite the provincial Conservative and Unity parties.
No word yet on who those replacement organizers will be (the official announcement will be made in about two weeks) but Andrew Jackson, who was elected last Saturday to the provincial Conservative executive council, has thrown his resume into the pile.
According to local lawyer Troy DeSouza, who was the party's eyes and ears on Vancouver Island during the last election "Andrew is a talented indvidual who has been a past candidate and knows how to run and win elections. And we need one of these organizers working full-time on the Island."
Mr. Reynolds also said Tom Flanagan, who managed the Conservative's last election campaign, is already assembling his next war room team and renting office space. And when the election is called, Mr. Reynold says the Conservatives will be taking their cues from the Republican's 72 Hour Task Force strategy. The strategy, which was instrumental in helping George W. Bush win the 2000 presidential election, focuses party resources on the last 72 hours of the campaign.
That's especially important for the Tories, since Mr. Reynolds (who attended the recent Republican national convention) says internal polling has shown 38 percent of identified Conservative supporters in the party's Constituency Information Management System database switched their vote in the last four days of the election.
Glad to find out just what Mr. Reynolds was up to at the US RNC...sure hope the 72 hr strategy has a contingency plan to keep the leader away from pretzels, mountain bikes and his inner Frenchman.
Andrew Jackson's experience as a fouth place candidate in 1993, and Official Agent to a campaign in 2004 that took a party that ran a close second in 2000 to a distant third place, makes me think that the only good experince that he has picked up along the way is learning exactly how not to run a decent campaign.
To let his name stand in 1993 in a Liberal riding with a Liberal tide coming to sweep out anything that remotely looked Conservative took both GUTS and COURAGE.
Andrew Jackson is a tireless worker with the Conservative party whose character is second to none. The writer John on the other hand obviously does not grasp how politics works or he would know that the official agent does not run the campaign but rather he lets his good name stand for business purposes.
To John I say give your head a shake,quit with the scurrilous crap and educate your self.The only one that looks like a loser with comments like yours is you!