Modeling Journey

Campaign Update Day 1 - Newmarket-Aurora

Today the election was finally called. Like all other ridings, Newmarket-Aurora has really been in a state of election readiness since the Progressive Conservative Party and Canadian Alliance Parties merged prior to the 2004 election. The 2004 and 2006 elections both gave us minority governments and one of the drawbacks of that is that an election can be called at any time. Basically since the day after the 2006 election, the Lois Brown campaign and Newmarket-Aurora Conservative riding association have been working hard to prepare for this day. We have been raising money, recruiting volunteers, identifying supports and lawn sign locations, putting together a campaign team and preparing the strategy that will now be executed during this campaign. The situation with Belinda Stronach had us on high alert for a by-election. That turned out to be an advantage as for months our team has been ready for the election in our riding.

As the Labour Day concluded, the election came up on us fast. We were prepared for the potential of Harper visiting the Governor General Tuesday, Friday or today. Over the long weekend, our sign team painted our stakes blue as a way of team building and ensuring maximum impact with our signs. We then spent the week organizing our sign team volunteers, dividing the riding into zones and held a special meeting on Friday night. At first we thought it would be a meeting and an overnight sign blitz until Saturday morning. Friday afternoon we were sure that the election was going to be called sometime around 8am on Sunday. As a result we organized our volunteers to be ready to paint the town blue the second the PM visited the Governor General. Earlier this morning the election was called and up until about 9pm several sign crews were going out hitting every major road, GO Train Station, and strategic location in the Newmarket-Aurora riding. Everyone worked hard and achieved our goals for the day. We put up hundreds of signs, hammered our stakes with pounders and used power drills to screw in the signs (note: I prefer using the twist ties but our campaign manager is a fan of drills and screws). It was a Sunday and it was raining. I was happy that the weather or the date did not deter our volunteers from coming out today.

Thanks to the efforts of our dedicated volunteers, tomorrow when residents of Newmarket & Aurora wake up and begin their commute to work; it will be impossible not to see several of the signs pictured above. Currently we have the Liberals and Tim Jones outnumbered at least 10-1 in signs. They will eventually catch up, but today a message was sent. Our campaign team is organized, enthusiastic and willing to work hard to get Lois Brown elected as our federal MP. This effort will continue and we will also begin fulfilling lawn sign requests. I look forward to working out the remainder of this campaign and doing everything we can to return Newmarket-Aurora to the blue column.

I also instructed the Lois Brown sign team to respect Liberal and other opposition signs. We will not block or knock down any of our opponent's signs and hope the same courtesy will be extended to us. Based on past campaigns I see no reason why that should be a concern. A sign war just means more work for all of us.

I will continue attempting to update the Blogging Tories and local residents about our efforts in Newmarket-Aurora. As the Conservatives and Stephen Harper look for a majority, this crucial swing riding in the 905 outside of Toronto will be crucial to those efforts. Obviously I will have to use common sense and reveal only what I can from a grass roots perspective. I hope you enjoy these updates and I wish other Conservative supporters the best of luck in their local campaigns.

Thanks for reading...

Darryl