I took away a few things from this article:
1) I wouldn’t want to have Global as my teacher as their marks were tough across the board! 🙂
2) Many observers are saying that there is very little light between Ryan Meili and Trent Wotherspoon and both would be fine choices as Leader for the NDP. The fact that they both received the same grade would seem to reinforce that idea.
3) At the same time, one of the big advantages Wotherspoon supporters tout that their candidate has over Meili is Trent’s decade of experience as an MLA. Given that experience (and the fact that he had a much higher profile as Interim Leader when this story came out), I would’ve expected Wotherspoon to get a higher grade than Meili. That’s not the case and shows that Meili, as a raw rookie MLA, was matching up pretty well with a much more experienced colleague. To put it another way, imagine what Trent’s grade might’ve been in 2007 when he was first elected and how that might compare with the grade Meili might’ve gotten after 10 years as an MLA, especially if he’d had a brief period as interim leader!
“[Meili] didn’t come across as a rookie, I think he had a fairly strong performance given that there’s a lot of attention focused on him, rightly or wrongly,” Rasmussen said.
The article said those other relatively new MLAs were, like Meili, performing quite well also which reinforces my belief that there was a path for a third candidate to run and “come up the middle” between Wotherspoon and Meili.
Too late for that now but fun to speculate how this race would’ve been different if Beck or Sarauer had entered the race as well.
(Of course, given the NDP’s track record at picking a successful leader the last two chances, who knows – maybe if they don’t make the right choice this time around, we’ll have another leadership race after 2020 and then we’ll have a chance to find out!) 🙁
Therefore be it resolved that the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association advocate the Government of Saskatchewan to adequately fund the public library system to keep pace with inflation, and ensure that both large and small community libraries can meet the programming and educational needs that are an integral part of library programming and services for their communities; and
Be it further resolved that the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association participate fully in any government review, advocating for improved services and adequate funding for the development of a long-term strategy for the future of Saskatchewan libraries that includes engaging the library community, municipalities, and the public to ensure support for our community library services, SILS, and programming for all ages and patrons regardless of socio-economic status.
Ryan Meili has just released the above video which captures a powerful message about his campaign and what he wants to bring (back) to the province – the NDP’s ability to tell stories that resonate with people.
There are a lot of ways to indicate who has momentum in a leadership race – some more valid than others.
For example, if someone takes the time to watch and engage with a candidate’s social media content, that’s a tangible demonstration of interest in what a candidate has to say. If people open their wallets and donate, that’s a good indication they support a candidate in a very real way. And if you have large numbers of people doing both things, you probably have a lot of momentum.
There are less valid ways to measure momentum (“nomentum”?) – for example, releasing polls without explaining the methodology or the margin of error or even worse, designing the poll to give a candidate the result they want.
Beyond that, polls are notoriously unreliable and getting more unreliable all the time – from Calgary to the UK to Washington DC. There are all kinds of reasons for that but sometimes it comes down to (hypothetically) some middle-aged dude getting a robo-call from a candidate they don’t support and answering that they’re an “18-35 undecided female” so that their true support doesn’t show up when the poll results are released. You get enough people doing that to mess with polling data (or supporters of one candidate hanging up when they hear its a call from another candidate or whatever) and the results become the definition of unreliable.
Because of that, I thought I’d do an analysis of some of the numbers that are out there that do a good job of indicating the real world support for each of the two candidates running for the Leadership of the Sask NDP.
It’s a different race with different dynamics today. But the message that these types of very real metrics send are clear indicators of who, to tie it back to Ryan’s latest video, is telling the best story – the story that people are interested in, the story that people want to engage with, the story that people are excited to hear and want to support.
To be blunt, given what happened in 2013, I firmly believe that the party ignores these metrics at their peril this time around. 🙁
Technically, a better husband would do a better blog post for his wife on their 15th wedding anniversary.
But since this is the anniversary of us doing the legal paperwork in jeans in our living room in Calgary while the anniversary of the day we had our wedding ceremony on the beach in Mexico fifteen years ago is still a month away (plus since we both tend to ignore the legal one anyhow) I don’t feel too bad about letting this one pass (basically) unacknowledged.
This song has a lot of religious imagery and considering we specifically requested a non-religious officiate who only slipped up once at the end of the ceremony when there was a brief sprinkle of rain and he remarked that was just “god showering our love across the earth”, it’s probably not one we would normally think of as one of “our” songs.
But the lyrics still make me think of us getting married on the beach in Mexico fifteen years ago for some reason. (And man, do I ever love Sam Baker as well!)
