Head Tale

Ryan Meili 2009 Sask NDP Leadership Regina Campaign Launch

I’ve told the story on this blog, likely a few times, but with the recent announcement that Ryan Meili would be stepping down as Sask NDP Leader, it’s put me in a reflective mood.

It’s starts with the fact that I’d always been interested in politics (at least once I got old enough to realise the impact politics had on our day-to-day lives.)

But I also never really engaged except in the most peripheral ways – like so many students over the years, attending a “rite of passage” protest against rising tuition costs in college, serving as Academic Rep on the Luther College Student Council (not because I was elected but because no else wanted to do it!), wondering if I should go to a Liberal nomination meeting when I heard there will be free food but deciding to skip it, likely to play Kaiser in my dorm’s common room.)

The closest I ever got to true engagement was buying a Sask NDP membership to vote in a leadership race in 2001 then letting it lapse when we move to Alberta soon after.

But in 2009, we were back in Saskatchewan, I was in my mid-30’s and with a recently completed Masters degree, a job that felt like it could become a career at Regina Public Library (13 years and counting bay-bee!) and a not-quite-two year old at home, it felt like I was becoming more of a “real” adult all the time.

Like many, I had closely followed the 2008 Democratic Primaries where an outsider named Barack Obama came out of nowhere to beat out the embodiment of the party establishment, Hillary Clinton, by engaging young people, new voters, POC while utilizing cutting edge technologies and political strategies.

The 2009 Sask NDP Leadership race in the wake of the Brad Wall/Sask Party victory in 2007 looked to be more “Hillary” than “Obama”.  Declared candidates including a former Deputy Premier, a current MLA, and a past Party President who was a lawyer (nothing against lawyers but if you look up “politician” in the dictionary, there’s likely a picture of a lawyer.  Hell, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are lawyers!)

I was resigned to not engaging in this race in any significant way. But then I heard that a young doctor from Saskatoon was running on a very progressive platform which, although not a perfect parallel, had echoes of Obama’s US campaign.

I saw that he was having his Regina campaign launch at a vegetarian restaurant in the Cathedral area so I took a late lunch break to slip over and check it out.  (In hindsight, I feel like having a campaign launch at a vegetarian restaurant might have been foreshadowing of the struggles that Meili would constantly have as a very forward-thinking politician in Saskatchewan.  Hopefully the next Leader launches their campaign at The Diplomat Steakhouse!  Or better, the Wakaw Bar & Grill) 😉

I was so clueless, unconnected and nervous, I thought one of Meili’s advisors was the candidate when I first arrived at the event.  And when I said I was interested in being involved, another advisor went out of his way to ensure both Shea and I were signed up for memberships right away.

Being an outsider campaign compared to well-known, highly-resourced front-runner, Dwain Lingenfelter, meant that I was quickly drawn into more and higher level volunteer activities than might have been the case otherwise.  (I think one of those advisors gave me his personal cell number and asked if we could call later to discuss ways I could help out.)

And indeed, I began helping out in a variety of ways – working on social media outreach, helping to draft policy position papers, working on the campaign web site and more.  (Heck, I might still have slivers from helping make the placard signs for convention!)

I also did a lot that blurred the line between official/unofficial campaign work – my blogging and videos being prime examples of that – and something else that might not fly in a traditional campaign but had an impact.  I would occasionally write something and see it paraphrased in a mainstream media article later.  (Of course, that didn’t always work out so well either.)

One highlight was a fundraising idea I brought forward which I’m fairly certain was the first of its kind in Canadian politics.  I even represented the campaign at one Regina meeting which had someone from the party, the three campaign managers and…me (the old Sesame Street song about “One of these things is not like the other” kept playing in my head for that one!) got updates and clarifications about different aspects of the race.

Partly because he was already an outsider, Ryan had nothing to lose in many ways. It was also part of his natural inclination which led to the campaign being a lot more open, experimental and innovative than a traditional political campaign.  For example, Ryan’s introductory videos not only stand up a decade later but in many ways, are even more relevant)…

I don’t think anyone (except those nerdy librarian bloggers on his team who liked to imagine speculative fiction scenarios) could imagine Ryan winning the nomination.  But I also don’t know if anyone expected him to make it so close – losing 55% to 45% of the vote on the final ballot partly but coming out ahead of the other two more established, well-known candidates.

I could turn this post into a month-by-month chronicle of the ups and downs of Ryan’s political career (and in some ways, outside of traditional journalists, I’ve probably documented those ups and downs more than anyone given the fact that I was an early supporter who often used this blog to comment on various developments relating to Ryan, the Sask NDP and provincial politics in general.)

But instead, I’ll just say that as big of a supporter of Ryan as I was personally, I always had a niggling doubt that Ryan wouldn’t be able to convert the many things I found appealing about him to broad support.

[Edit to add: My other niggling doubt was that Ryan was simply too nice, too principled for politics.  I remember once when I was pushing that Ryan take a stand on reducing the number of MLAs in the Province after the Sask Party had added three seats.  “Well, we don’t want to send a message that we think politicians aren’t important” one of his team members told me. “Uhm, *we* know that but 90% of the population hates *all* politicians so it’s a no-brainer as a policy position as far as I’m concerned.  I don’t think Ryan even vetoed it as far as I know but that was one memorable example of perhaps being a bit overly positive instead of practical.]

Maybe I even called it in a 2012 post during Ryan’s second leadership run when I observed that Ryan represented the most change for the party but which also maybe meant he’d be the hardest sell.

To put it another way, when I graduated in rural Saskatchewan in the early 1990’s (coincidentally, the same year that Scott Moe did), I graduated with maybe 1 or 2 kids our of a grad class of 44 who were similar to Ryan – super-intelligent, caring, ambitious, worldly.

But I graduated with 1 or 2 *dozen* kids who were similar to Scott Moe – rooted in their small towns, more likely to spend time at the rink than the library, more interested in vehicles of conveyance than being vehicles of change.

That may sound judgemental or elitist but it’s not meant that way – hell, when I graduated high school, I was probably close to a 50-50 blend of Meili and Moe’s traits myself in many ways – smart enough to be on the honour role, dumb enough to drive drunk regularly.  Nerdy enough to be editor of the yearbook, jock-y enough to be on the football team.  Compassionate enough to worry about the underdogs in society, blinded by my privilege to have said and done things to others with less privilege that I regret to this day.

So Ryan was always going to have massive challenges as Leader of the Saskatchewan NDP and the party’s poor showing in the 2020 election, Ryan’s first as Leader, proved that to some degree.

And again, there were those niggling doubts – how could a *doctor* not do better in an election during a worldwide pandemic???

There were many factors beyond Ryan of course – the widespread feeling that the pandemic was on the wane with vaccinations on the horizon and death counts very low at the time, overwhelming Sask Party dominance in rural Sask, some campaign missteps (and possibly some party infighting), great variations in the resources available to the NDP compared to the Sask Party, etc.

And I don’t take pleasure in the NDP losing at all, no matter who the Leader is.  But I could take solace that at least Ryan had (barely) done better than the previous two NDP leaders who had lost their seats and also not made any gains compared to Ryan – a low bar by any measure.  But enough to justify keeping Ryan on as Leader in my mind.

But then the upset loss in longtime NDP stronghold, Athabasca was obviously the last straw and likely the trigger for Ryan’s decision to step down as Leader.

So what’s next?

Personally, I hope this isn’t the end of Ryan’s political career as I still believe he has so much to offer. But instead of provincial politics, maybe it’s as an MP?  Or maybe it’s a role in a different province that’s less conservative and more open to the amazing skillset he brings?  (I think his wife is from Quebec, non?)

Time will tell but in the meantime, I just want to thank Ryan for some of the most enjoyable, educational, memorable times I’ve ever had in my life over the past 12 years.  It seems like hyperbole but I honestly feel that being part of his team has literally changed how I view the world and made me a better person.

My engagement with the party has ebbed and flowed over that same time period (after Ryan lost to Cam Broten by 44 votes in his second leadership campaign and with Shea nine months pregnant with our second child, I told another highly engaged Ryan volunteer I was going to be a lot more selfish with my time going forward in terms of not only political but other volunteering.  She said “That’s not selfish, that’s ‘self-first’ and it’s important” – a line that really resonated and and that I continue to keep in mind to this day.)

Anyhow, that’s all a long way to say that I’m *not* putting my name in the ring for the next leader of the Sask NDP. ;-). But some names are starting to be floated.

And though I’m a lot more aware/connected to the party than I was in 2009, part of me hopes that another long shot outsider candidate comes along to challenge and attempt to change what the party and really, the province can be.

In fact, I have an idea for someone who might be perfect for that role.  But that feels like a post for another day.

In the meantime, this decision will close one chapter of Ryan’s life.  But who knows what chapter it may open next?