The success – and failure – of each party’s federal election campaign often rests on the shoulders of people you may never have heard of. These behind-the-scenes architects of campaigns and advisers of key politicians are at least as important as the names you’ll see on lawn signs and billboards over the next few weeks.
Doug Finley
As Stephen Harper’s campaign manager and director of political operations, Doug Finley reportedly has more influence over candidate selection than any other person in the party, and has more access to the Prime Minister than members of cabinet.
Finley was born in Scotland and became involved in politics as a student Scottish Nationalist before coming to Canada in 1968 with a degree in business administration.
In 1974, he took the job of volunteer campaign director for Lachine-Lakeshore Liberal MP Rob Blaker. In the 1980’s, he rose through the ranks at aerospace company Standard Aero and eventually became president.
Finley got involved with the Progressive Conservatives and then the Reform Party which was in the process of morphing into the Canadian Alliance party.
He joined Harper when the latter was the Canadian Alliance leader and helped orchestrate his leadership win of the merged Progressive Conservative and Alliance parties later that year.
Harper made Finley his director of political operations in 2004, and Finley ran candidate seminars across the country for the election that year. In 2005, Finley became Harper’s deputy chief of staff and remained in charge of political operations.
Finley was named director of the Conservative campaign for the 2006 election. Many Conservatives reportedly attribute Harper’s win to Finley’s organizational abilities. He ensures candidates adhere strictly to campaign messages decided by the party leadership.
Finley is married to Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley.
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Patrick Muttart
Muttart is the Deputy Chief of Staff in the Prime Minister’s Office for Strategic Planning. He is an accomplished campaign architect, but at 35 years of age, can be considered an up-and-comer in the Tory campaign arsenal.
He is responsible for maintaining the overall brand of the Conservative Party, and is a close adviser to the Prime Minister. Muttart has a hand in high-level strategic planning as well as small details such as photo ops, sound bites and ads. He is entrusted with both policy and strategic duties inside the PMO – significant, since it is rare for one individual to be given such responsibility.
After the Conservatives were defeated in 2004, Muttart co-authored a strongly-worded memo to party leadership, including Harper, outlining changes that helped shape the successful Tory campaign of 2006.
For that campaign, Muttart identified personality “types” who would be most responsive to the Tory message, and then developed a communications campaign to target those types.
He attended the University of Ottawa before moving to Toronto to work for public-relations firm Navigator. From there he was recruited by Finley to work in the leader’s office on election planning.
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Kevin Lynch
Lynch, the clerk of the Privy Council, reportedly has enough influence with the Prime Minister to have input on the choice of cabinet appointments.
Lynch was born in Cape Breton and holds a PhD in economics. He has spent most of his career working in fiscal policy and economic analysis at the Finance Department, but has also held a number of senior positions in government, such as deputy minister of industry and deputy finance minister.
Lynch became the executive director of the International Monetary Fund before being named Clerk of the Privy Council. He has a reputation within the bureaucracy of being a “big-picture” strategist.
Lynch’s pet project is the Tory-appointed panel studying competition and investment policy, with emphasis on improving the private sector. This fits in with Tory policy, but Lynch is well-respected by all parties and is skilled at building bridges between public servants and politicians.
His appointment was largely interpreted as a sign that the government wants to convey an image of non-partisanship. Cooperation with other parties will continue to rely on his professionalism and balanced approach.
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David Emerson
Emerson is a national co-chair of the Conservative election campaign. Emerson was named Foreign Affairs minister in the Harper cabinet in 2008, but is not running for re-election in his Vancouver-Kingsway riding.
Emerson received a doctorate of economics before joining the government of B.C. in 1975. By 1984 he was named the Deputy Minister of Finance for the province, and left two years later to become president and CEO of the Western and Pacific Bank of Canada. He returned to provincial politics before being named the CEO of forest products company Canfor Corp in 1998.
He was first elected to the House of Commons as a Liberal in 2004 and was named Minister of Industry that year. He was re-elected in 2006, and was named Minister of International Trade, and subsequently negotiated a truce in the lengthy Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute.
Emerson crossed the floor from the Liberals two years ago, mere days after being elected as a Liberal for the second time. He will provide managerial expertise and advice to the Conservative campaign.
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Bernard Lord
According to Montreal’s La Presse, former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord will be named national co-chairman of the Conservative campaign.
Lord was a Progressive Conservative while Harper was an Alliance member, before the parties merged in 2003. Although they do not share the same political roots, Lord has a close relationship with the prime minister.
Lord was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick in 1997, and was elected to the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly in a by-election the next year, when he became the leader of the official opposition. In 1999, he led the Progressive Conservatives to a landslide victory and became premier.
Lord was touted as a possible leader of the newly-merged federal Conservative party, but stayed in New Brunswick, where he was part of a one-seat minority Conservative government. The party was defeated in the 2006 New Brunswick election, and in January of the following year, Lord stepped down as leader.
Harper appointed the fully bilingual Lord as a special adviser on the official languages file in December 2007. Lord has helped lend stature to the Conservative party in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, where he is well-known and popular.
He is educated as a lawyer, and has a reputation as a consensus builder on the national stage. As co-chair he will help run Conservative headquarters and campaigning operations.
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Doug Ferguson
Ferguson was named National President of the Liberal party in April. He was brought in to improve the party’s ability to raise funds at the grassroots level, since big private donors are now banned, and the party relies heavily on individual fundraising.
The Liberals have traditionally trailed the Conservatives in individual donations. In 2007, Elections Canada reported that the Conservatives collected donations from three to five times as many people as the Liberals, whose election hopes in 2008 will be directly tied to Ferguson’s ability to improve those numbers.
Born in Ontario, Ferguson has a law degree from the University of Western Ontario and was a practicing lawyer for 20 years before becoming a law professor at his alma mater.
In 1994, he was an organization chair for the provincial Liberals, before moving on to the corresponding post with the federal party four years later.
He is known for creating the “Liberal University,” a training program for candidate hopefuls and party organizers. He has been a campaign manager for elections at all levels of government.
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Mark Marissen
Marissen is the national campaign co-chair for Stephane Dion, and was national campaign manager during Dion’s upset leadership win in 2006.
He was an organizer for the national Liberal campaign during the 1993 federal election for Jean Chretien, and became a political adviser to cabinet minister David Anderson. He has held the posts of Minister of National Revenue, Minister of Transport and Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
Marissen was the campaign chair for Paul Martin’s Liberal leadership bid, and was the British Columbia campaign chair for Martin in the 2004 and 2006 elections.
Many observers paint Marissen as one of the shrewdest political strategists in the country. He has a close personal relationship to Dion, and a great deal of control over Dion’s election campaign strategy.
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David Smith
Along with Marissen, Smith is a national campaign co-chair for Dion. He is educated as a lawyer and is an acting senator from Ontario.
Smith became active in the Liberal party in the 1960s, and served on Toronto’s city council in the 70s. From 1980 to 1984, he was elected as an MP for Don Valley East and was the Minister of Small Business and Tourism in the Trudeau cabinet.
He went back to practicing law in the 90s but continued to play an active role in politics. Smith was a trusted senior adviser to Chretien and chaired his campaign elections in 1993, 1997 and 2000. He was appointed to the senate by Chretien in 2002.
He was a key backer of Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal leadership campaign before being named national campaign co-chair for Dion.
Smith is a veteran organizer, and according to some observers, his efforts are crucial to the party’s chances in Ontario.
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Gordon Ashworth
Ashworth, a veteran of federal and provincial Liberal politics, is the National Campaign Director for Dion. He served as National Director of the Liberal party between 1978 and 1982, and was a senior adviser to Prime Minister Trudeau.
He was also National Campaign Director for the Liberal party in the 1980, 1993 and 1997 federal elections.
Ashworth also offers communications, policy and political advice to Premier Dalton McGuinty, although he has no official role.
He heads a consulting firm in Toronto specializing in strategic management and communications planning, and is a key member of the Dion election team because of his extensive campaign experience.
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Anne McGrath
McGrath is the President of the NDP party. She has a long history of activism with labour, student and feminist groups. In 1995, McGrath ran as an NDP candidate in an Alberta by-election, placing third.
Before being named the president of the party, McGrath was the Director of Operations for the NDP federal caucus, and is said to be very comfortable dealing with the press. She is a frequent commentator in print, radio, and TV, and is fluently bilingual.
McGrath is a key strategist in Jack Layton’s camp, and will provide a face for the NDP in the media. Before the election was called in September, she was already making television appearances commenting on NDP strategy, and promoting Layton as best-suited for the job of Prime Minister.
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Pierre Ducasse
Ducasse is a former NDP leadership candidate who ran against Layton in the 2003 leadership campaign. He has since joined Layton’s office as Quebec adviser and caucus liason.
Ducasse, 36, is expected to contest the Quebec riding of Hull-Aylmer in the coming election, but will continue to provide key strategy input on the activities of the NDP in Quebec.
He was a federal NDP candidate in his native North Shore, and is said to be popular within the party. After Thomas Mulcair’s by-election win in Outremont in 2007 for the NDP, the party may turn their focus to Ducasse as their next target to gain ground in Quebec.
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Adrianne Carr
Carr is the deputy leader of the Green Party. She was a founding member and leader of the B.C. Green party, and is also a close friend of national party leader Elizabeth May. She is expected to run federally for the Greens in the Vancouver Centre riding.
Carr is often credited with pushing the B.C. Green party to major party status, and is known as a skilled organizer and fundraiser. She is said to have considerable influence within the party, and is co-chair of the party’s shadow cabinet.
Carr was born in Vancouver and has had a career as an academic and geography instructor at Vancouver Community College. She has been a fixture in the B.C. environmental movement, and co-founded the Western Canada Wilderness Committee which later became one of the largest environmental organizations in the province.
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Mike Nagy
Nagy is a Green party candidate for the Guelph riding. Nagy has a background in business management, but has also been a long-time environmental activist, with a particular interest in water policy.
This will be Nagy’s third time running for the Greens. He had a head start to the 2008 campaign, since he was running for the Guelph by-election that has been cancelled to make way for the general election. He has run a successful candidacy so far; polls put him at around 20-per-cent support, a solid second behind Liberal Frank Valeriote.
With the extra campaign time Nagy could make gains in Guelph, especially if party leader Elizabeth May wins her fight to join the televised debates.
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Josée Beaudin
Beaudin is a Bloc Québécois candidate for Saint Lambert. This is her first time running and she is relatively inexperienced in politics, but she is attempting to replace the popular Bloc MP Maka Kotto.
The area of Saint Lambert was historically a Liberal stronghold before the sponsorship scandal, which led to Kotto being elected there twice. But the Bloc has lost prominence in Québec recently and Beaudin’s campaign will be a good indication of the Bloc’s overall influence.
Beaudin, 46, has a background as a community organizer and development officer, and was a founding partner of a communications firm in Quebec. Since 2005, she has been administrator of the Corporation de développement communautaire de Longueuil.
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Mario Laframboise
Laframboise is the incumbent Bloc Québécois candidate in the Argenteuil-Papineau-Mirabel riding, and is the head organizer of Duceppe’s election team.
In 2000, he won the riding by only 542 votes, but won by a landslide in both 2004 and 2006. His main area of focus has been the local economy, which is dominated by forestry, tourism and agriculture, at a time when the economy is gathering steam as a major election issue.
Laframboise will head up the Bloc Québécois campaign headquarters, and will help organize the party’s overall campaign.
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