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SPEAKER_00: Ambitions made real.
Zain: This is The Strategist, episode 1866. My name is Zane Belgy. With me, as always, Stephen Carter and Corey Hogan. Oh, my goodness, he is here. His drink is here. And with that drink and scene, that right there, folks, was the greatest practical joke of all time. It took us one month, a lot of money, but
Corey: with that drink
Zain: but we staged it perfectly. We did. Carter, let's talk about the practice. got your asses yeah
Corey: about the practice. got your asses yeah
Zain: yeah do
Zain: they think he's an mp carter these fucking people are so stupid they
Zain: they are so
Carter: so no no no no no no
Corey: so no no no no no no okay here we
Zain: no
Carter: no
Zain: no
Carter: no
Zain: no okay
Carter: okay
Zain: okay
Carter: okay
Zain: okay here we go here we go you saw already now
Carter: we
Corey: here
Carter: here we
Corey: we go you
Carter: you saw already
Corey: already now i remember and i'm an mp and i realized maybe i should take a more professional approach to this your method your
Carter: now i
Zain: i remember and i'm
Zain: i
Zain: professional approach
Zain: approach to this your method your method process was excellent in the last month but like daniel day in the break room you You can fucking knock it off now. You are not an MP. We need to just make sure that people understand the real truth, that Corey Hogan has not been elected. Well, in
Corey: in the last month
Corey: in
Zain: in
Corey: in fact, I have been. You know what? There's paperwork and everything. I
Zain: I
Corey: I got parliamentary emails. It's a thing now. So the joke continues. You know what I love about
Zain: emails.
Zain: So the
Zain: You know what I love about
Zain: about you is the dedication, Corey.
Corey: Let's just keep it going another year or two, this joke, at the very least. At the very least.
Corey: Carter, he
Zain: he
Zain: is an MP.
Corey: Which is what? He is a member
Zain: Which is what? He is a member of Parliament. Technically, MP
Corey: Technically, MP-elect until I'm sworn in. Oh,
Zain: Oh, that's right. I saw that banner the other day on television as they kind of filmed you with the boomer camera on the ground, looking up right at your genitals to be like, look at this guy, ready to represent Calgary. I'm so glad I came back one
Corey: saw
Corey: I'm so glad
Corey: I came back one final time onto the podcast. Is this one final time? I don't know. I don't know. We should talk about that at some point. This is the accountability
Zain: Is this one
Zain: should talk
Zain: point. This is the accountability episode, by the way. This is the accountability
Corey: by the way. This is the accountability episode. Just so people know. Do you want to explain what the accountability episode is? I feel like we've
Zain: feel like we've done enough of them. But yeah, Carter, how about you explain? Because recently you've been held accountable, subjected to them a lot. Not really,
Corey: held
Carter: held accountable,
Corey: accountable, subjected
Carter: subjected
Corey: subjected
Corey: to
Carter: Not really, it's me who gets tased. I've escaped mine,
Zain: who gets tased. I've escaped mine, so there you go. Yeah.
Carter: Yeah. Well, so after every election, one of us participates in it, except Zane. We have to face the board of the Strategist Media Corporation and stand accountable as to our performance. Win, lose, or draw, we come back before the board of directors and we account for our behavior. And in this particular case, we're going to be accounting for Corey Hogan's behavior as a candidate.
SPEAKER_00: to our
Zain: Sorry, I'm a little confused. Is this Corey Hogan's behavior or is this how I helped Corey Hogan become the member of parliament?
Carter: of parliament?
Zain: Sorry, I asked you. What would we do without you, Zane?
Carter: Well, that's why I left myself out, Zane. I figured that you and I gave about equal effort. uh so you know this
Carter: this is really i say as it relates
Zain: really i say as it relates to as it relates to optically looking like you did more you definitely won that race i
Carter: i did look like i did yeah yeah you
Zain: i did
Zain: did look like i did yeah yeah you definitely look like you did more but
Carter: but corey are you insider
Corey: but corey are you insider
Carter: yeah zane
Zain: yeah
Corey: yeah zane uh steven definitely drank more coffee in the campaign office than you there's no question about that yeah
Zain: question about
Zain: yeah carter's
Corey: carter's
Zain: carter's walking around terrorizing people uh let's talk about all of it are you okay to talk about all of it sure uh where do you want to start mr hogan you have or sorry is it mr hogan mp elect hogan or should we just go with the right honorable at this point i don't know if uh if uh carter are you knocking on wood when i say that i know i'm not
Carter: that i know i'm not i i uh if he doesn't make cabinet then yeah i think the right honorable is
Corey: yeah i think the right honorable is like the prime minister you guys yeah i
Carter: guys yeah i know but it's the honorable we have to oh okay sorry the honor well okay well i'm
Zain: oh okay sorry the honor
Zain: well i'm gonna refer you to his honor hey how about uh hey
Carter: hey how about uh
Zain: good job getting the king like you guys did a great job getting the king that's gonna all me i think i'm pretty sure all me yeah
Corey: yeah the mplf from calgary confederate that's right he
Zain: he heard you were there i mean he heard confederation was worth fighting for he
Corey: he heard you
Corey: there i mean he
Zain: said let me get my ass onto the
Corey: the
Zain: the plane
Corey: plane i guess it's worth fighting for are you gonna get him to sign your sign
Zain: sign
Corey: sign
Zain: sign well
Corey: well
Corey: you know i wasn't going to but that's weird enough i just might now you know you
Zain: you
Corey: you get it probably it's probably a breach of several royal like norms to do that but yeah we can find out what
Zain: get it probably it's
Zain: yeah we can find out what the norms are uh cory hogan where do you want to start you are indeed a member elect of parliament yes i am uh do you want to start with where the campaign began because we have done the episode in which you launched and we held you accountable for your launch uh which was the press release in the irish stew where do
Corey: the press
Corey: do you want to start we can why don't we go back to that day and just do it ever so slightly before Or do you want to
Zain: Or do you want to go before? Yeah. Well,
Corey: Well, I don't know if we need to go with like the whole thing before. Start with birth.
Zain: Start with birth.
Corey: Okay. I was born on a cold winter night in Ottawa, Ontario, December 12th.
Zain: 12th.
Corey: And yada, yada, yada, here I am, right? But more
Corey: recently, as we're getting into the election, we've already talked about how it was a pretty quick thing, how I ended up being a candidate at the very last minute. it but i do want to talk about the friday where i got the phone call from the election chair her name's kathy and she basically said hey um the you know the the
Corey: current candidate thomas keeper he's out it'll be public in about an hour you said if you were gonna run it would be in calgary confederation well if you mean it here we go you know if this is what you want to do here you go and i was at the time on my way to go have lunch with steven we didn't invite using uh uh i'd
Zain: you want
Zain: added all my value on the front end yeah yeah
Corey: added all
Corey: yeah yeah it was already like because we already knew it would be just too long no so i went to have lunch with steven and we were going to be meeting up in the northeast but then we ultimately ended up uh me going to steven's house right and we just sat down and steven to your great credit was like okay well let's just make the list of everything you need you know you'll need signs you'll need literature you'll need buttons you'll need to order these things which means you need suppliers you need to have and like an office like just like like all of it and it's not an exaggeration to say like less than an hour later it kind of felt like there was a real campaign that was taking form we
Carter: form we
Carter: we were done oh
Carter: oh carter was in his
Corey: carter was in his absolute element he's like calling suppliers and just kind of like grinding them on like prices and timelines like right in front he's like no no we're gonna need it sooner you know no no and i can't give you the creative until you know everything's approved and all of this but i mean i'm really grateful i just want to say steven for that first of all because like it wouldn't really happen but But we were farming out people to write content. We were identifying other volunteers. Like everything was sort of just all of a sudden happening. And I'm in the green light process at this point. It's just like, holy shit. Okay, now this is kind of a campaign. And we've talked about how that took a little bit longer in no small part because I had to be interviewed by Colin. Colin Laund. Yeah, we talked about Colin Laund. Life Laund Listen now.
Zain: talked about Colin Laund. Life Laund Listen now.
Corey: But yeah, and then we found ourselves on Monday night. i had been approved and we realized that that meant the information was going to come out on april 1st so i
Corey: want to give a bit of a shout out uh to the press release launching me here which i did not write um but i did really appreciate how a it went out on april fool's day so it confused the hell out of people but what really confused them is at the end like it was like almost like they were playing it straight until the end and then it talked about me winning an irish stew do competition which
Corey: is true but it led to many many people wondering whether it was actually real that i was i was running for office talk
Zain: office talk to me cory about and carter i guess you're part of this talk to me about the strategy of burning three to five days and and confusing people about whether cory's a real candidate it's
Zain: it's unconventional but talk to me about that all
Carter: all that really matters is getting people talking about you and
Carter: and if they're talking about you wondering if you're in or you're out it has the same impact as uh because
Carter: because they probably wouldn't have talked about them otherwise i mean most of the media know them so
Carter: so they were probably going to be like ah not
Carter: not not a real star candidate just one rung
Corey: candidate just one rung below a star candidate one one rung below a
Carter: one one rung below a star candidate oh
Corey: oh that's that's how
Zain: how he that's how i define you in fact i think those are my words yeah weird weird
Corey: i
Carter: i
Corey: i think
Corey: weird weird
Corey: weird
Zain: weird yeah
Corey: yeah almost
Corey: almost like they were on public record somewhere yeah
Zain: yeah oh speaking
Corey: speaking
Zain: speaking of public record
Corey: record cory uh who's doing the
Zain: the sweep of all your
Corey: your
Zain: your previous comments no
Corey: no no let's not even a joke about
Zain: about that. You
Corey: You can
Zain: can
Zain: can
Zain: already see
Corey: already see
Corey: see
Zain: see
Corey: see he's uncomfortable,
Zain: Carter.
Corey: Carter. Yeah, listen, because I'm now the Member of Parliament. Elect, elect.
Zain: Carter. Yeah, listen, because I'm now the
Zain: elect.
Corey: Nothing matters. That's right. You
Zain: Nothing matters.
Zain: You can literally say anything about anyone right now. You've called Carter an asshole as a candidate. So you can call Carter an asshole as a MP elect right now, and I'm going to give you a free shot to do it right now. All you have to do is say, Stephen Carter, my constituent, is an asshole. Yeah, well, that's
Corey: asshole. Yeah, well, that's a slow pitch over the plate. I think I would actually gain a few votes saying it, but i'm still going to refrain um no so like carter's right like one of the things that was interesting about it going out that way is it really did create quite a buzz you know like people were talking about it there was you know the way social media engagement works of course like the conversation drives the content as much as anything else so um it wasn't like planned like that just happened to be the day we knew this was all coming out but i definitely think i
SPEAKER_00: i
Zain: i definitely
SPEAKER_00: definitely think
Corey: definitely think it worked to our advantage but
Corey: if you want to move to kind of the next step here and we can can jump into the strategy here. I kind
Zain: I kind of do, but maybe this is the appropriate moment to talk about what we were talking about last episode without you on it, which is getting your take about the growth of the campaign from day one, just all the people kind of coming around and the podcast importance. You can talk about that now, or you could talk about that as you talk about the next phase, but I do want you to address it at some point. Yeah,
Corey: Yeah, I think in some ways, they're inextricably linked, right? Within, even
Corey: even before that April 1st date, because of course, when it became clear that i was going to be running we were talking to people it was you know the team was growing um and
Zain: know the team was growing
Corey: uh we
Corey: we ended up in a place i felt at least around day two like tons and tons of volunteers lots of interest uh really big campaign team probably five or six people who could have been campaign manager on the team ultimately that was a role that heather mccray uh led you know steven's wife and uh or maybe i think more accurately we'll start referring to steven as heather's husband but exactly i
Carter: exactly i think that's better i think it's better for all of us but
Corey: it's better for
Corey: but uh yeah explain
Carter: explain that carter what
Corey: explain that
Zain: what what do you mean by that she
Carter: she uh
Corey: she uh i
Zain: i
Corey: i think it's better that
Carter: i think it's better that she has a bigger identity than i do she uh well she she held together
Zain: that
Zain: she
Corey: she uh well she she held together like a very you know it's not easy to manage a bunch of people who could be managers in their own right i guess that's what i would say and did a really good job but before that moment when there was just a bunch of people going out doing stuff and a bunch of volunteers coming in and a bunch of stuff that was in varying states of happening or should have happened or hadn't happened i'll totally tell you like on day two or three there if you had given me a time machine on day three i probably and said you can go back in time and not run i probably would have taken it why
Zain: why and
Corey: and it wasn't because there weren't volunteers and it's not because there wasn't money the volunteers and the money came in big time Yeah, like tons of it, just tons of it. And it was because it just all of a sudden felt like there's not enough time. This is insane. I've got fewer than four weeks to build. No, not just to win, to build something from nothing and then have that something win, right? That is an insane amount of time. These are the kind of things that are usually built in months, if not years. And we were planning to do it.
Zain: like
Zain: to build. No,
Zain: build something
Corey: Like, it just seemed like the height of hubris at around day two or three when we still didn't have the office open. You know, nobody even had the time to kind of go pick it up. There were a bunch of things falling through the cracks because we didn't have a campaign manager identified there yet. And at that moment, if you had offered me that trade, I would have taken that trade. But of course, that's not how real life works. And it passed quickly. By the next day, the offices open, and all of a sudden, it's a massive hub of activity. All of a sudden, the literature has shown up, the signs are popping up all over the area. It
Corey: was incredible how fast it happened. But it, you know, it was so daunting to think about how fast it had to happen. Carter,
Zain: Carter, jump in here. You obviously, you know, despite the fact that I undercut you constantly, and I was going to say needlessly, but that part's not true. No, that's not true. No, it's needed. It's needed. It's absolutely needed. You are intimately involved in this campaign, as much as I joke about it. Talk to me about the dynamic of Candidate Corey, a good friend of yours, running when he's used to being you on a campaign, the you of a campaign sort of thing. So talk to me about that dynamic and how you observed it from your lens. From that day one, take me back to that lunch that I wasn't invited at, and then subsequently to all the other things I wasn't invited at. Take me through all those things and how Corey— Oh, no, no. You
Corey: No, that's not true. No, it's needed. It's needed.
Corey: Corey— Oh, no, no. You were invited to all of them.
Corey: The number of times I called you and you're like, I'm sorry, I'm busy. I'm going to call you back in five minutes. Now, now— And then four days would pass.
Zain: The number of
Zain: Election day, I was at Ikea.
Corey: Yeah,
Zain: Yeah, that's true. I was doing important work. And you were
Corey: Yeah, that's true. I
Corey: work. And you were also at the victory party, so— Yeah,
Zain: Yeah,
Corey: Yeah,
Zain: exactly.
Zain: Great, nailed
Corey: nailed it.
Zain: it. I nailed it. I was ready to be interviewed by media. Tell them about my role.
Corey: I nailed it. I
Corey: I was
Zain: Yeah.
Corey: Yeah.
Zain: told you I'd take all the credit. Carter, tell
Zain: tell us about seeing Corey in this light.
Carter: Well, Candidate Corey was kind of hilarious because Candidate Corey knows all of the steps and knows all of the pieces because he's a strategist and ultimately has a tremendous amount of experience working on his side. And so
Carter: he had a really high level of understanding of when he was being insane um
Carter: um when he was did but
Corey: when he was did but it didn't stop it from happening no
Carter: no
Corey: no it
Carter: it
Corey: it
Carter: it didn't stop it he was still being insane there was one particular um broad broadcast message that we put out and like
Corey: didn't stop it
Carter: like
Zain: like what do you mean like like i'm like an ivr yeah like an ivr
Carter: ivr yeah like an ivr so broadcast voice recording message and and uh cory voiced it cory voiced it we we wrote it we were having difficulty getting a supplier uh it took some time finally got through several script revisions and wound up with a good supplier and then you know everything kind of just was you know it took it took me probably a week and a half it was probably one of the longest things that we took to get done on this entire campaign and frankly it
Carter: was just another voice broadcast right like it was it was an absolute nothing burger but everything that we tried to do on it it just ran into an obstacle and i and i basically would go back to cory and say man
Carter: man it's
Carter: it's just not worth it it's not worth it like Like, this is a nothing burger. And he'd be like, the entire campaign hinges on this one broadcast.
Corey: it's just not worth it it's not worth
Corey: broadcast.
Corey: With a little bit of sarcasm and self-awareness. No,
Carter: With a little
Carter: -awareness. No, you were like, this is the most, without this, the campaign may not work. Everything hinges together on this. That's literally what you said to me on at least two occasions. We're
Zain: We're holding you accountable.
Carter: We're
Zain: We're holding you accountable. He's
Carter: We're
Corey: We're holding you
Carter: you
Corey: you accountable.
Corey: He's not wrong. You go insane as a candidate, right? You see these things when you're a campaign manager or a campaign strategist, and they bother you so immensely. There's these fixations on these things where a candidate's just like, if this thing's not going well, everything's going badly. It's like the brown M&Ms, but for candidates. Every candidate I've ever worked with has had one of these. The one thing they think, if you do this, we win, and if you fail at this, we all fail, and it's your fault. Were you
Carter: candidates.
Zain: you cognizant of not being that candidate? I was, yeah,
Corey: candidate? I was, yeah, I really didn't want to be that candidate. And I think for the most part, I wasn't that candidate. But there were moments. That four weeks. There were moments I kind of lost my mind. Oh, yeah, you should have seen
Carter: Oh, yeah, you should have seen them on the NDP flyer.
Carter: You know, essentially the lend us your vote flyer that
Carter: that we did. We did
Corey: did. We did not lend you vote, just vote. Just vote for me. Just vote for us. Yeah, this was one of the parts. But it was essentially lend
Carter: Just vote for me. Just vote for us. Yeah, this was one of the parts. But it was essentially lend us your vote. And Corey, the
Carter: the
Carter: the first draft came out and Corey's like, no. And basically redesigned the whole piece. This is something literally. I forgot about that. we had 500 copies made this is not a an insurmountable piece of the of the puzzle we dropped about 140 000 pieces of literature cory got this one piece of literature that we dropped 500 copies of and he was late stayed up late one night to redesign it to make it look the way he wanted it to look pretty
Corey: literally. I forgot about that.
Corey: that. we had 500
Corey: pretty nice at the end though right did look nice it was your
Carter: did look nice it was your design wasn't the flaw your
Carter: your flaw was as a candidate rewriting and redesigning the whole yeah that
Corey: yeah that very true yeah so you have the fixations as the candidate the other thing you have and that i think it's kind of closely related is like the the brain wave i'll call it right where and as a campaign manager you're always like oh fuck another brain wave yeah oh yeah and and where it's just this idea where you think okay everybody drop what they're doing which is required to win the campaign and just go do this one thing you know every candidate what
Carter: yeah so you
Carter: yeah oh yeah and
Zain: candidate what was your one thing it
Corey: might have actually been that flyer right but uh there were there were more than one of those there'd be times where i'd just be like what about this what about this meeting how are we doing this and again i think to steven's point your point zane i
Zain: uh there
Corey: i knew when i was doing it like there was it's like part of my brain was holding the other part of my brain hostage it's like you don't need this is not the big deal you think it is and then the other part's like screw you other part of the brain we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this now i'm driving the bus i'm the captain now right and uh and
Corey: and so you end up doing a few things like that along the way but But yeah,
Zain: Carter,
Corey: Carter,
Zain: Carter, give him a grade. How did Corey do as a candidate? As it was, what's Corey's candidate grading that you're going to give him? And on a scale of and I'm just to be on a scale of one to 10. It's a scale that you may not have heard of before. Yeah,
Corey: As it was,
Carter: scale that you may not have heard
Carter: Yeah, on a scale of one to 10. He was a definite A minus. He he had the ability to his his video shoots were really solid. He did some excellent video shoots. His ideas weren't off the wall crazy. Like he came up with the slogan, which is super important. coming up with confederation we'll talk
Zain: super important. coming
Zain: up with confederation
Zain: we'll talk
Zain: talk about that in a second
Carter: second uh worth fighting for that was that was him and everybody um felt
Carter: pretty you know dedicated to him there was no uh why about i don't know i was trying to get to the bottom of it why
SPEAKER_00: why
Zain: why about i
SPEAKER_00: i
Zain: why like i've listened to this podcast i've been here for a long time why why was that the only one that was able to stay away i guess it's a question it
Carter: was that the only one that
Carter: question it
Carter: it was a star
Zain: star
Carter: star and
Zain: and
Carter: and it was uh it was crazy oh i like the quotes there
Zain: i like the quotes there okay so i thought thought he was one rung below a star they thought he was okay so it's just misinterpretation it was weird but you know we he
Carter: okay so i
Carter: it's just misinterpretation it was weird but
Carter: but you know we he everybody wanted to see him people came into the office they wanted to see him the volunteers wanted to see him there was a tremendous number of pictures being taken with the guy um he was a you know he was basically a small town celebrity how
Zain: town celebrity
Zain: how is that for you hogan
Zain: like the podcast has given and i think this part you may not disagree with from the last episode but the podcast has given us like very niche alberta western canadian specific political fame to a degree well and but this is more than that yeah unless you disagree with even my premise i sort of disagree that it i think
Corey: think
Zain: think you're selling
Corey: think you're selling us short a little bit zane and i guess selling you guys short as i move on to this next thing but like even on cbc's coverage on election night when the first time i popped up on the screen rosemary barton's like that's a name political nerds will know you know and it's just like there was a certain you know cachet from the podcast and And
Corey: you have this long-standing relationship with the listeners. I heard you guys talking about it. But we talk to people for literally hundreds of hours about our views on things and talking about things. And you can't help but get to know people a little bit over that and really have a bit of an understanding. It's asymmetrical. I always feel like, oh, you've heard me talk a lot. I wish I could hear you talk a little bit more. You know so much more. it like makes the conversation like they've just got just so much more information but but there's no question in my mind and i kind of jumped past it because i meandered but the podcast and the podcast community was such an enormous part of the story here like an enormous part yeah hundreds of volunteers but beyond the volunteers the cred and and i like i could think of very specific doors that i was talking to people and it was not just a couple it was a lot where it'd be like oh i've heard of you and i'd be like oh you listen to the podcast oh i don't listen but my friend listens and they say you're great oh that's
Zain: of volunteers
Zain: oh that's interesting and
Corey: and and i think that when you think about it not just in terms of our listenership which is really big for a podcast as much as we joke about it and all of that right it's also the people in their immediate orbit like of those 30 000 people who listen to the podcast it's the 10 people they're gonna say can you believe this fucking guy's running i've heard him for hundreds of hours and right it was The casual listener,
Zain: was The casual listener, in addition to that. Exactly. And, you know, the
Corey: Exactly. And, you know, the number of people who'd say, not
Corey: just the podcast, but like, I heard you on West of Center, or I've seen you on CBC, or I've read you in this article or whatnot. Yeah.
Zain: Yeah. You would get that at
Corey: You would get that at
Corey: at
Zain: at
Corey: at the
Zain: the doors. A
Corey: A
Corey: A lot. Yeah. Interesting. You know, it was, especially Calgary Confederation. See, my
Zain: See, my theory was the podcast was great at galvanizing volunteers for you.
Corey: theory
Zain: That people would be like, oh, if Corey's doing something, I've gotten to know Corey over dozens or hundreds of hours over the last number of years. I'm showing up to help that guy. That is not surprising to me. In fact, I think if any of us would have run, we would have probably had that. But the fact that people know you from a tangential perspective, that I think is an interesting insight. Carter, did that surprise you too, or were you, because maybe I have sold, not our podcast, but this impact of a community like this, let me put it that way, from a strategy perspective a bit short. Were you surprised by folks behind the door, not just the ones coming alongside Corey, having name recognition and community recognition and understanding a bit of profile?
Carter: Yeah, I mean, it was a bit beyond the expectation. It was, wasn't it? Yeah, it's surprising when, you know, it is surprising when we run into listeners. It's even more surprising when we run into people who are tangentially related to the listeners, when there's people who don't listen but still know our names. That's interesting. You know, Corey became kind of the lightning
Zain: was, wasn't it? Yeah,
Zain: surprising when,
SPEAKER_00: when,
Zain: That's interesting. You know, Corey became
Carter: lightning rod for that. And so, you know, we wound up with quite a few podcast listeners. We also wound up with a lot of people who didn't listen to the podcast. Had no idea, heard it before. Yeah, yeah. Which is what I'd
Zain: Had
Corey: Had no idea, heard it before. Yeah, yeah. Which
Zain: Which is what I'd expect, nine and a half out of ten. Yeah. And
Corey: Yeah. And not just, I don't think it was just people who had no idea who I was. There were also individuals who, for example, knew who I was, but from different walks of life. Like, the podcast was a huge component, but I also do want to underline, like, I live here, I work here, I work for- Oh, you contain multitudes.
Zain: podcast
Zain: - Oh, you contain multitudes.
Corey: multitudes.
Zain: multitudes.
Corey: multitudes. This is
Zain: This is good. And this brings us to our new segment, Corey Hogan, Cabinet Pitch. Go ahead, Corey. Yeah, please
Carter: please go ahead. no
Zain: no
Carter: no
Corey: no listen man i i i until well i'm still technically but like until two days ago when i resigned i was vice president at the university of calgary which is probably the biggest individual organization within in fact i know it is within the the city or calgary confederation right so right right
Zain: right so
Corey: so that there is also that right like the thousands of people that i've interacted with there too yeah
Zain: of people that i've
Zain: carter
Zain: um okay over to you you have you have cory running as a candidate that's an A minus. You've got this high level name recognition. I got to ask you, though, before I get into what else you guys did, because there's a lot I want to talk about. What surprised you in a potentially, not negative way, but what was an opportunity that didn't fully kind of come to fruition? And I fully acknowledge that for anyone who was jumping into this campaign, unless you were on this track for the last two
Zain: years, just waiting, right, which Corey was not, as we've we've discussed. What was something that just like did not click? I'm curious, because a lot seemed to have clicked. It may have given you guys a further re-appreciation of what you can do in a short amount of time, which I think the Carney leadership race did for us from an outside perspective. This race probably did for you in an intimate perspective. But what didn't click? And then I want to get to the heart of the question around, you know, appreciation of timelines, so to speak. Yeah,
Carter: This race
Carter: Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm not sure that anything anything didn't click um why do you think that is well one well one thing i was surprised by was the lack of connection between us uh skyview mcknight and center as campaigns as campaigns we were absolutely on an island like
SPEAKER_00: why do you think that is well
Zain: as campaigns as
Carter: like
Zain: like viable campaigns that that were supposed to win or had a good shot at yeah just so people who are not from the area understand why you're mentioning those yeah
Carter: like viable
Carter: yeah just
Carter: yeah so from those four campaigns that were all supposed to be competitive and and at least three were supposed to win um one would have thought that there maybe would have been some note comparisons things that are working in in different ridings things that uh you know some comparisons of okay or how are you contrasting how are you you know doing the comparisons are you are you featuring your your candidate in the front row are you putting mark carney in the front row what what is it you're actually trying to achieve here and there was i think zero of that cory i I mean, there was virtually none of that, even when Corey was entering after the first week of campaigning. So that did surprise me. I thought that we would see more collective work together with everybody. But instead, we
Carter: we had ran a very independent campaign. And that very independent campaign took choices that were very
Carter: dissimilar or like very unrelated to the other three campaigns that were, quote unquote, competitive. Speak
Zain: Speak to me about that, Corey. And I think it's a good time to mention the Confederation is Worth Fighting For tagline as well, and its genesis and its impact and meaning on the campaign when we talk about incongruity or just doing things differently, for lack of a better term. So the main question is, what surprised you? And then let's hit on the Confederation is Worth Fighting For. Yeah,
Corey: Yeah, why don't I kind of build on the coordination point? And look, I really, really want to tell you, like, there are good reasons for this. The Liberal Party of Canada has been running flat since the fall. I don't want to be shitty to anybody who's worked really, really hard. But you think about they had a leadership to run and then they immediately ran into an election. But, yeah,
SPEAKER_00: yeah, some
Corey: some of the coordination was a bit wild. And I'll just give two examples that sort of made me laugh. But if I was a different kind of candidate in a different kind of circumstance, it would actually probably make me angry. The first is the Liberal Party creates a campaign manual for each of the candidates. and it's customized like it says these are your vote targets these are the things you need really yeah yeah and
Zain: it's
Zain: yeah and
Corey: and
Zain: and they send it oh that's interesting yeah they sent it like i'm sure 99 of the content is common
Corey: common between it but yeah you know some of it's specific to like what your vote target quite the lift jesus well
Zain: yeah you know some of it's specific to
Corey: well sure and you know what i got mine the friday before the election so
Corey: was here
Zain: here impressed
Corey: impressed being
Zain: being like
Corey: like
Zain: like wow that's
Corey: wow that's
Corey: that's an amazing document like if i was if i was sitting in there being like oh i better figure out how to tell my candidate's story and i better identify donors and all of that like if i was waiting for this thing and i got it on the friday i mean for me it was just kind of funny it was more like why bother like you have to know like if this shows up well i'm going to change my whole campaign in a weekend and then i have to ask how it showed up was this like a piece of mail yeah it was like couriered it was like anyways i uh and then it's pretty funny
Zain: that's an amazing
Zain: yeah it was like
Carter: like
Carter: it's pretty funny to me yeah it's the
Corey: funny
Zain: funny to
Corey: to me yeah
Zain: yeah it's the level of like if someone was just like let me just email villain even though it's late better absolutely yeah no it was
Corey: absolutely yeah
Corey: was like a
Zain: was like a physical courier
Zain: courier
Corey: courier
Zain: courier
Zain: courier that
Corey: that makes
Zain: makes
Corey: makes it
Zain: makes it even funnier that's why i think it's important for people to know well
Corey: well
Corey: well the other thing is there's this thing called the writing services package and in 2025 most of it really is about the digital tools that you get access to but there are like components such as buttons and posters of the leader and just generic liberal pop-up banners and stuff like that great for you
Zain: like that great for you pre-created don't do
Corey: -created don't do it for you and it comes in a number of packages and the first package i got about a week into the campaign was just plastic sleeves for id badges no nothing else no lanyards nothing like that about a week later i get couriered from staples a bunch of stickers that say authorized by the official agent for the liberal party of canada i don't know what they're for they just show up and tuesday the day after the election the rest of the writing service package shut up Okay,
Zain: Okay, okay, okay, okay.
Zain: Now, now,
Zain: now, you
Zain: you may not want to be here for this part, Corey.
Zain: Are there four ridings around
Zain: around the country that
Zain: that were waiting for this package that should have maybe won to form the majority? I tell you. That just did not get it in time. No.
Carter: tell
Corey: tell you. That just did not get it in time.
Zain: Carter and I will talk about this later. None of these things were vital. yeah
Carter: Carter and
Corey: and
Carter: and
Corey: these things were
Carter: were
Corey: were vital. yeah
Corey: yeah none of these things were vital and other candidates actually did get their packages at different times i understand i understand and i see
Zain: and i see i let's just let's just assume they thought you didn't need it uh but did that that didn't say anything like like nothing meaningful to you other than the fact that no this was a party flat out unless you want to make a broader everyone everyone was
Corey: no this was a party flat
Corey: unless you want to make a broader everyone everyone was going nuts and i will say like the the local the local field organizers were so phenomenal and so helpful to us right and who are
Zain: who are these people these are people that that yeah Yeah, they work for the Liberal Party of
Corey: they work for the Liberal Party of Canada, and they're here. And they assign to different campuses. Yeah, so, like, Morgan and Tyler, and, you know, from an election chair point, Kathy, like, wonderful. They were really helpful, and they did what they could to help. There were just these moments where you're like, oh, yeah, I remember now. We've crashed into this election after a lightning-fast leadership review, and everything
Zain: everything
Corey: everything is just kind of a little bit frenetic. In
Zain: In some ways, Carter, didn't it feel like, and I say didn't it, because there's conversations that I've had with you, despite the fact that I was not involved as intimately as Carter. There are conversations I've had with both of you along the way, Corey, around what's been going on and how. But, Carter, didn't it some way feel like a mayoral where you were kind of— Corey was his own thing. Yeah, he had to use red, and yeah, he had to use liberal assets, but you guys were doing things that other campaigns did not to kind of speak to your incongruity. And isn't that where, like, both of you kind of thrive? Confederation is worth fighting for is one example. You know, I'll mention another. other, I think you guys may have been the only campaign in Calgary that was running against Danielle Smith in some way with her being on leaflets. I'm not sure who else did that. And of course, you had a unique opportunity here with Nixon as being your candidate. But Carter, did it kind of feel like because it was so short, and it was not centrally coordinated, and they didn't have months to plan it, that you were kind of just running a Merrill in a writing?
Corey: And isn't that
Carter: Yeah, I mean, I would suggest that we were running the
Carter: right campaign, right? Like, I think that But Corey, being kind of a mature candidate, wasn't worried about, oh, should we do contrast? You know, he understood right off the bat that we needed to do contrast. And the contrast wasn't going to be, you
Zain: you
Carter: you know, Jeremy Nixon versus Corey Hogan. It needed to have more oomph to it. We were reminded by our good friend Dan Arnold that Corey Hogan's name recognition in the riding was going to be about 20%. And Mark Carney's was going to be 100%. yeah
Zain: know,
Corey: Carney's was going to be 100%.
Corey: yeah so
Carter: yeah so we put mark carney in the window we put danielle smith in the window we put those two battling and there was some pushback on on on that contrast but that contrast i still maintain was one of the one of the reasons that we were so successful in this actual campaign well
Corey: sure and actually why don't i zoom back a little bit to the friday of the so i mentioned that like there was a moment where like hey if you'd given me a time machine i would have you would
Zain: would have taken it like day two
Corey: day two or three yeah yeah and so but you can't and so what i did at that time is i sat down and and i am a strategist and so i thought well what are the things that i think need to happen right now and i i put out a list of like four bullets of like these are the activities that i believe need to occur in order for us to like run this campaign and none of them are earth shattering but earth shattering is not the point right earth shattering is not the point the point is to make sure you've got a clear strategy a simple strategy that everybody can do and i just just pulled it up here on my computer and so number one strategy one was project a two-way race we needed people to know it was between myself and the conservative candidate so that meant we we had big groups going out instead of scattering into smaller groups we prioritized getting signs up we focused on major arteries and sign locations we took any broadcast media opportunity we could we highlighted vote projections and we tried to create a buzz we tried to get people to think okay this is a really serious really exciting campaign the
Zain: serious
SPEAKER_00: serious really exciting
Corey: second one and this ties into carter's last point was take the fight to nixon you know uh he is outside of the conservative mainstream it personally individually might be very nice fellow but he ran for daniel smith twice he is certainly more right wing than len weber who was the candidate and the mp that he was looking to replace and he uh and he works for the ucp caucus right now and so it was really about making sure people understood that contrast and and to steven's point in many ways it was less about me and jeremy it was more about our two bosses right it was about it was about mark carney and it was about danielle smith uh but there is this u.s style politics that smith has brought in and there's this ambivalence to canada and we wanted to make sure that it was was highlighted that goes kind of the slogan right and number three here and this this is kind of it there's only three and then there's a broader comment was it's all about out carney and canada so when you say it yo you were running a mayoral style campaign i
Zain: it was
Corey: agree and i don't i agree in the sense that from an organization we were really free to do what we want actually to a degree i haven't seen in the liberal party in decades right right like latitude that was really command and
Zain: that from an
Zain: right right like latitude that was really command and control yeah it was really wild governing party of canada you probably would not see as someone who's actually who's actually someone who's like implemented that for other candidates as being most certainly like
Corey: yeah it was really wild governing
Corey: someone who's actually
Corey: like i am not like we had a totally free hand yeah
Carter: yeah
Corey: yeah
Carter: yeah um
Corey: um
Carter: um
Corey: um but
Corey: it was all about carney we put mark carney wherever we could put him right it and we really wanted to emphasize it's not about the past 10 years it's about the next 10 years it's about strong serious leadership and it's about our country so so those were the governing like the three principles that i left everybody on on kind of the campaign leadership and then in
Carter: mark carney
Corey: all of that was we have no time so we need to scale everything's got to be about scale it's not about about the two conversations it's about the 200 conversations prioritize broadcast prioritize multipliers so get as many volunteers out as you can for example eliminate blocks let people do their things don't be the person they're waiting to hear from like just empower people and so that was the strategy you know and that's how we pulled through carter
Carter: eliminate
Zain: carter jump in i've got a more specific question for you in a second here
Carter: well i mean the totally free hand is an interesting interesting observation we didn't ask um
Carter: um that's
Corey: that's also true we
Carter: we we came in with on april fool's day and we were you know we didn't get anybody to sign off on our signs we had no sign off on our brochures we had we didn't go to the
Carter: the uh the powers that be in the party and say you
Carter: you know tyler what do you think of this or morgan what do you think of this we did it showed
Carter: showed them afterwards when it It was like when 56,000 copies of something went out, then
Carter: then they went, oh, that's
Carter: already gone? Yeah.
Zain: Do you think everyone did it the same way, Carter? No. I don't.
Carter: Do you think everyone did
Carter: No. I don't.
Carter: don't. I don't think that everybody...
Zain: don't think that everybody... That's a Stephen Carter special, though. That's like where you operate
Corey: operate the best. Well, look, it wasn't just Stephen. Like, Stephen will get his share of the glory, but we had a whole team of people writing things, developing things, designing things, and we empowered people. We just said, we don't have time to run things up the chain. Just do it. Just do it. Use your brain. be smart about it just do it yeah
Zain: the best. Well, look,
Zain: we had a whole team
Carter: yeah cory
Corey: cory
Carter: cory
Zain: speaking of i'm gonna ask you this question then rather than than carter because because i i i think it's a good good point to kind of give credit across the board to the those who built the campaign uh sort of thing even if steven you and heather laid down the tracks cory
Zain: was this a campaign i'm gonna ask the question this way and maybe you can pick up on my intent was this a campaign that was meant to last four weeks or do you feel like if you guys had added weeks added to it it would have only gotten stronger stronger. And I guess the reason I'm asking that is like the difference between building a campaign for short term versus slightly more midterm purposes. I'm curious your observation. Well,
Corey: Well, we would have built a different, um, I think we were, and you know, this, right? We had these big days where we tried to get as many volunteers out as possible. And
Corey: before that pink and fed red, and they were really successful. Like we had the most doors knocked of any liberal campaign. And then we said, let's do more. Right. So we had two days where we really smashed some records where we're you know thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of doors hundreds of volunteers and we just got out there and uh you can't do that if you're running for two years right in many ways we use the shot of adrenaline you get from being a week late the sprint justify the sprint and um i think it was really successful if you had the same number of volunteers over a different period of time you would have paced yourself different or you should pace yourself differently i believe and um and it would have just been different that's all Yeah.
Zain: Yeah. Carter, what were your observation on that, on building something for four weeks versus campaigns you've built in the past that often last sometimes years? Well,
Carter: Well, I think that in longer campaigns, you're trying to buy everybody
Carter: everybody in, like get everybody's buy-in all the way through. And you're trying to include them and kind of move them up into
Carter: into more and more responsible positions, right? So you get a door knocker who starts off as a door knocker. They move up to a captain. They move up to a logistics coordinator. the number
Corey: logistics coordinator.
Corey: the number of battlefield promotions we had was like see we we just really it was like you door knocked once you're a captain congratulations and
Carter: was like you door knocked
Carter: captain congratulations and did that happen
Corey: did that happen across the the the org like it happened for us but like no no i mean it's your org your org like oh yeah oh yeah zane like it was we it was crazy like and this came from having so many volunteers like the scale like right you door knocked once before you know how minivan which is the liberal app to track these things works congratulations you're a captain and we you know and i did get some flack from some volunteers and actually i think fair flack where they'd be like oh your captains don't seem very like organized or coordinated sometimes and i said well yeah but like got the job 18
Carter: happened
Zain: happened
Carter: no no i mean it's
Zain: it's your org
Carter: org
Zain: org
Zain: your org like oh yeah oh yeah
Zain: like
Zain: got the job 18 seconds ago
Corey: ago they cut the job 18 seconds ago and they're doing a pretty good job given that you know and they were wonderful like did so every one of our volunteers was so good carter
Zain: carter we talked about volunteers on your accountability episode yeah give me a sense of what this um campaign
Zain: has taught taught you about volunteers, either about volume, scale, ambition, the work. We talked about the podcast influence. I'm kind of curious if this has taught you something new, something interesting, has underlined a lesson as it relates to volunteership. Because the people-powered aspect of this, I think is really impressive, like really, really impressive. And I think it was perhaps not unique to your campaign, Corey, but you were one of the few campaigns that was blessed with it so quickly, especially given week late and then three days of people people not thinking it was real, or at least a portion.
Carter: Well, I think that me doing a volunteerism isn't real anymore kind of thing two weeks before he launched. You kind of did that, didn't you? Yeah. And then all of a sudden, everybody's coming out and saying, I actually am going to volunteer. You know, what did I learn? I learned that there still is a volunteer culture, that people will volunteer if they are presented with the right opportunities. opportunities and i by opportunities i don't mean like oh i prefer to do policy instead of door knocking there
SPEAKER_00: kind
Zain: kind of did
Carter: there which by the way our strategy
Zain: there which by the way our strategy over which is always the trouble we've had everybody like the three of us yeah oh yeah
Carter: the trouble we've had everybody like the three
Carter: yeah oh yeah everybody wants to be the strategy which
Zain: which is why i i didn't participate i was like cory it's taken oh okay well then i'm not showing up cory exactly the slot's taken well that's good but carter what did you what do you mean around like people people want to show up and have that ambition for well
Carter: exactly the
Carter: well i mean we had so many people who wanted to do the door knocking they wanted to do the campaign they didn't want to do uh like they just wanted to meet cory they just wanted to you know and if door knocking was the way to meet cory then they were happy to do that that's so fascinating yeah i mean when cory came in and this is the last i think it was the saturday cory before yeah i know what
Zain: yeah
Corey: yeah
Zain: yeah i
Corey: i
Corey: yeah i know what you're talking about where it was almost like a receiving line yeah
Carter: yeah every all the volunteers are ring are showing up and And Corey's like, thank you for coming to my funeral. This is... That's not what I was going for. Is this the
Corey: every
Corey: what I was going for. Is
Zain: Is
Corey: Is this
Zain: this the evening
Carter: evening we
Zain: we
Carter: we
Zain: we
Carter: we did
Zain: did
Carter: did
Zain: did the thing together? No, this was the
Carter: this was the
Corey: the Saturday.
Zain: the Saturday.
Corey: Two weeks after. Just before the election. Yeah, the Saturday
Zain: Two weeks after. Just
Carter: Just before the
Zain: the
Carter: Yeah, the Saturday morning of... So the paint the town red kind of, or not the paint the... It was the flood the red zone. Yeah, it was the flood the red zone. And it was massive. And Corey just stood there for
SPEAKER_00: the... It was the flood the red zone. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was the flood
Carter: at least a half an hour, maybe even longer, just shaking hands and thanking people for showing up and taking pictures and people
Carter: people were just delighted to be doing it so my relationship with volunteerism has has significantly shifted in the during the course of this campaign this campaign is kind
Zain: the course of this campaign this campaign is kind of giving you like like a shot in the arm and a dose of hope in that sense oh
Carter: oh yeah for sure for
Zain: for sure anything carter you court once again anything carter you would take from this campaign and do differently on your next one i
Carter: i think that uh running
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Carter: I mean, trying to make it so that everybody feels like they've got access. To
Zain: the candidate. To
Carter: the candidate.
Carter: To
Zain: To the
Carter: the candidate or to me or to the campaign leadership. Is that usually not
Zain: the campaign leadership. Is that usually not the case? I
Carter: I think that you sometimes
Carter: sometimes feel like you're shut off, right?
Carter: right? That the campaign has a closed door to the people who are actually doing stuff. Yeah,
Zain: Yeah, corner office style, even how the office is set up and stuff. Now, Corey, what did you kind of learn with this broader sort of volunteerism that your campaign kind of
Carter: corner office
Zain: unlocked
Corey: unlocked or unearthed? So, like, volunteers are multipliers, right? I always think about this in terms of Canvas, and we'll get there, I'm sure. But, like, we had this chat. We had this chat during the election, right? Like, let's say I go door knocking for two door knocking shifts, and they're great door knocking shifts.
Zain: great door knocking shifts. You want to talk about this, yes. Yeah.
Corey: Yeah. And you talk to, let's say, just for easy math, 100 people. Sure. sure and i think that's a pretty realistic number over like a day um maybe
Corey: maybe 10
Corey: of them you're having a conversation that is in any way shape or form persuasive like you might actually be able to change their vote because a lot of them are like ah i voted for you bing and they were going to vote for you either way or no i'm not voting for you bong you know and you're not getting that vote right but like the actual meaningful conversations you can have and let's be clear like as the candidate i have more of an opportunity to do that because i'm not speaking on behalf of the the candidate i am the candidate right yeah
Zain: actually be able to change their vote
Zain: yeah so
Corey: so let's say it's 10 there
Corey: are 35 days in a regular campaign that means you're having 350 conversations of that level of meaningfulness as the candidate being out there every day but i think this goes to steven's point if you're out there every day and all of the volunteers come out with you every day and you have hundreds of volunteers all of a sudden you are having thousands of conversations and so i mean like volunteers are a multiplier and they make the campaign work they do a campaign does not work without volunteers because the candidate cannot possibly talk to 90 some thousand electors themselves in a campaign you know and they're not going to have uh the the conversations that they need to have at scale so again it all goes back to that point about its scale and you
Corey: you get those volunteers going out there when you're out there and you're talking to people and you're moving through there as well and so i just i can't say enough good things about the volunteer side of this organization we had tara and we had sangeeta we had bobby pitching it at a certain point because tara had to step away for a few days they were like amazing coordinators but amazing volunteers like they just really showed up and we had this problem on the campaign quote-unquote problem and
Corey: somewhat tied to like the battlefield promotion thing every campaign i've ever worked on i think if
Corey: if you have like a door knocking shift and say a dozen people are signed up for it yeah nine are going to show up right this is the only campaign i've ever worked on where consistently more people would show up for the door knocking shift than were signed up to show up for it so we ended up very quickly having to get to a place where we had why why
Zain: yeah nine
Zain: had why why why i'm sorry if i'm being so like pestering i just want to see if there's lessons that others can adopt here why do you think that was well
Corey: well i do think that there was a little enthusiasm there was a momentum we tried to go big we tried to create a bit of a show and um and uh we also always tried to have fun you know there's that that paul wells rule like the person who's having the most fun is winning i think by that rule we there wasn't a day we lost like this was a campaign with a lot of lightness too like it was a pretty fun campaign this
Zain: this this i want to pick up on this because i think this is really interesting to me carter talk to me about the fun aspect in two ways aspect number one is the cory way like the campaign has to have fun but i also think there's something that i think extends from the podcast and the personality personality um and i'd say authentic personality that cory is which is obviously i think everyone who listens to the show more than likely comes to the same conclusion which is cory's probably the brightest one on the show sorry carter but secondly cory also doesn't take himself all that seriously he joins us in the mud in in that regard i think there's something to that am i am i right or wrong there in that sense in the sense that you know as funny as able to to get down as authentic romantic, you know, and despite, like, having these ambitions, which have led him to this seat, and hopefully more, that there's, like, an element of personality and fun that compounds a campaign that has to have fun. And maybe the heart of the question is, does your candidate need to be a fun person in
Zain: in order to have a fun campaign? And that might sound like a really simple question, but I often have never thought about it that way. And I think one of the reasons, if I kind of go on a bit of a diatribe, one of the reasons the Nenshi campaigns, I think, have been so successful is that Nahid is his own version of witty and fun and like sarcastic and biting. And I'm not all these terms apply to you, Corey, but I'm just kind of describing. And that's led to funnish campaigns. So Carter, having experienced, I guess, both of the examples I'm putting on the table, but just as examples, does your candidate need to be a fun, interesting, authentic, maybe take out authentic, because we've talked about too many, but do they need to be a fun person in order to have a fun campaign? I
Carter: think it certainly helps. I think that the ice-cold candidate who
Zain: ice
Carter: is a little bit aloof and a little bit removed doesn't get to have as much fun. You know, I think that the really fun campaigns are the ones where the candidate's going to laugh at your jokes. Right.
Carter: Right. And if we've learned nothing else on this podcast, it is that Corey's an
Zain: it is that Corey's an easy audience. It's been a long time. You know, he's laughed
Carter: You know, he's laughed at all my jokes for 10 years. That's true, actually.
Zain: That's true, actually. Has he? Oh, yeah.
Corey: Has
Carter: Has
Corey: Has he?
Carter: yeah.
Corey: yeah.
Zain: Carter, do the joke. I mean,
Corey: mean, I wanted to laugh at that one. There was nothing there. There's
Zain: wanted to laugh at that one. There was nothing there. There's nothing there. There's not even a joke and he's laughing. Fucking laughing at air.
Corey: There's nothing there. There's
Corey: There's
Carter: There's not even a joke and
Zain: Carter, does your candidate need to be an easy laugh in order for your campaign to have fun? It
Corey: candidate
Carter: candidate need
Carter: It certainly helps. Okay, there you go. I appreciate that.
Zain: Okay, there you go. I appreciate that.
Zain: Take me to a couple of things. What
Zain: have both of you appreciated? And Corey, I'll stick with you on this because I'm curious as a candidate and as a person who initially raised this point who wanted to take a potential exit ramp on day two. What have you appreciated about what you could do in four weeks? That when you're a conventional first-time candidate, but long-time strategist wisdom, you may not have appreciated without this lived experience that you just went through.
Corey: Oh, you know, it's funny. So I work
Corey: at a university. Before that, I worked for the government. I was in the private sector before that. And campaigns
Corey: are much faster than any of those things, right? Just much, much faster. and I think that it was a great learning that I think it's just good life advice like just do it just you know just start just go it's so crazy what you can accomplish in four weeks when you need to accomplish it in four weeks and there's that old cliche about there's weeks that feel like years and years that feel like weeks right and this definitely was weeks that felt like years like it's hard to even remember my life before april 1st in some funny ways but um yeah it it's
Carter: Just much,
Corey: it's
Corey: it's kind of the corollary to the point we're making about the liberal leadership race like there's so many things in life whether it be meetings or campaigns clearly where it's like air in a balloon it will take more and more and more but it doesn't necessarily improve the outcomes for you so just just go for it i i really do believe that and i think it was um it was such an incredible reminder i cannot believe what the team built in four weeks it's totally nuts to me
Zain: four weeks it's totally nuts
Zain: carter what do you think your thoughts here well
Carter: i
Carter: i i
Carter: think that the the the structure and the organization that came together so quickly like as much as we're talking about all the volunteers and how great all the volunteers are there was a core team that was there i think by april the third uh
SPEAKER_00: there was a
SPEAKER_00: uh and that
Carter: uh and that core team you know uh cory's mentioned a couple already uh with tara and sangeeta and heather um but carol levis who
Corey: who we were going to get there i assumed but like just just an absolute legend on get out the vote quinton with canvas you know videos that ryan put together for us communication skills
Carter: communication skills yeah who we'd worked with at h and k yeah uh all back former colleague of
Corey: yeah who we'd
Corey: yeah uh
Corey: former colleague of ours yeah yeah
Carter: yeah and this one coming through and helping us with all of the space and making sure that we could kind of just even have a headquarters uh you know and esmahan writing everything like Like, there was a tremendous amount of work that occurred from a group of volunteers, from a very small group of volunteers at the,
Carter: don't want to say higher levels. I want to say at the beginning, because
Carter: because it really was about getting them in and getting them organized. That group being organized and ready to go by April 2nd, April 3rd, gave
Carter: gave us April 7th.
Corey: gave us April 7th. You haven't even mentioned Harris, who was the CFO. cfo and he was the cfo before and in fact he was the cfo when confederation was founded back in like 2013 so when
Carter: was the CFO. cfo and
Carter: when you were the initial president when
Corey: when i was the first president of calgary confederation liberals yeah and uh uh
Corey: uh i'm sure i'm now very worried that we've probably forgotten like somebody blindly obvious but uh myself that
Zain: myself that would be myself but i just just to make sure okay
Corey: okay
Zain: okay but just to make sure i'm waiting i mean
Corey: okay but
Corey: waiting i mean it was amazing man it was like it was really something and the volunteers fed into this everything flowed so nicely like the volunteers fed into quentin's canvas strategy and sangeeta's phoning strategy and and of course the gotv and there's virtuous cycles we created where they'd show up to one event and then they would come to another it was just amazing which oh and signs geez that's another thing let's
Zain: let's let's talk about
Corey: about which
Zain: which which x factor do you think gave you the biggest lift on this campaign because let's let we haven't even talked to cory about the results but you'll you'll probably uh and and both of you will know them, but this is a massive flip. This writing has not gone red since the 1940s, or whatever, this area, I think that's exactly right, since the 1940s. You were the only liberal in the entire city. The incumbent, unfortunately, George Chahal, did not get his seat.
Corey: which which
Corey: whatever, this
Zain: And the last election, Corey, this was a plus 15 conservative win, maybe more? Yeah. Yeah, like something I think that that I don't think I'm off if I say something like that. Yeah. And you turn that in four weeks as a unit and as a national movement that the Carney, you know, machine was driving.
Corey: Yeah. And
Zain: What do you think was the X factor that gave you local lift? Does that make sense? Because I like you think it's appropriate to credit what Carney and the Libs were doing at the at the top. But what's the local lift that allowed what I just mentioned from a few metrics perspective to happen? And I think your candidacy is unique in particular. let's skip that for a second because we've talked about it what i don't yeah it's
Corey: about it what i don't yeah it's not me i mean i'm glad i got to be the vehicle for it it's to me it's the team it's exactly the people that steven was just mentioning i have never on a local campaign like this could have been the team that ran a national campaign and i'm not kidding like this was like an incredibly good incredibly polished incredibly experienced team and you know we we already talked about the support we were getting from morgan and tyler in particular as well like they just everything was just clicking I've never, never worked on a campaign that
Zain: this was
Corey: that is just one writing that had such an abundance of professionals on it. It was crazy. Well,
Zain: Well, let's talk about this then, because Carter, you and I have talked, and actually, Corey, I think you've been part of this episode too in the past, talking about, can
Zain: can your team have too many A players?
Zain: Remember, we've
Corey: we've talked about
Zain: about this. This has been,
Corey: about this. This has been,
Corey: been,
Zain: been, you guys have just lived through this. So I would have thought, yes,
Corey: So I would have thought,
Corey: yes,
Zain: yes, if you had asked me before this campaign. Now, would I be honest with you on this? That's one of the reasons I was not as intimately involved. I'm like, Corey, you have all the help you need. You've got all these amazing people.
Corey: before this campaign. Now, would I be honest with you
Zain: But you would have thought, yes, I don't want to interrupt you, but I just want to interject like a real-world sort of example, which is like
Zain: getting both of you to now, having lived this campaign, stress test the theory. Can you have too many star players? Can you build the Lakers with Shaq, Kobe, Malone, and Gary Payton? And still have a successful outcome. Because I do want to test that with you. Yeah,
Corey: Yeah, I mean, I guess the answer is, again, the time probably helped, right? Like, we all just had to get down to it. Because the time also then drove the management philosophy of, like, you're empowered to just do it. So, we didn't have campaign meetings, Zane. Like, we didn't sit there, like, once a, well, every morning we did, like, almost like a stand-up. Yeah, like a
Zain: campaign meetings,
Zain: like a stand
Zain: Yeah, like a huddle.
Corey: huddle.
Zain: huddle. But you weren't, like, being like, what's our strategy for today? No, it wasn't that. It wasn't
Corey: But you
Corey: wasn't that. And so we didn't sit there and then argue about what we were going to do. It was like, well, it's finance. Harris, what are we doing there? Okay. Oh, it's GOTV. Kara, what are we doing there? You know? And it just worked because people were empowered. It's just like everyone was
Zain: was like,
Zain: people were empowered. It's just like everyone was like a senior person at Brookfield and they just knew exactly what to do, Carter. Is that a fair analogy? It's the exact analogy. It's
Carter: It's the exact analogy. It's the exact analogy. But to
Zain: analogy. But to the point, what did this teach you about A players on teams? and anything you would change and and further implement or is this was this part of the steven carter philosophy to collect all the talent you can and make it work i'm kind of curious around what you think about talent you
Corey: you know so like i think in general very talented people if you don't give them enough to do get bored about what was amazing about this campaign is just the scale of volunteers and the scale of the effort meant nobody was bored like nobody's sitting there being like i want to do that why am i not in charge of that we're all drowning in our own separate streams of work so so i don't know if there's a clean answer to that zane but i think part of why it worked with so many people at such like experienced and seasoned levels is because
Zain: what was
Zain: nobody's
SPEAKER_00: nobody's sitting there being like
Corey: like like nobody was fighting over work we were just trying to get things done well
Carter: well and that's where i wanted to go i mean there's at least five campaign manager quality people on this campaign at least five and
Carter: and those campaign managers many of them have done
Zain: many of them have done the job successfully before in the past as well but
Carter: in the past
Carter: but
Carter: but they all took the role that was given to them and that role turned into or that needed to
Zain: or that needed to be accomplished yeah yeah and
Carter: yeah and it turned out to be something bigger too right like we didn't just run a GOTV we ran the best GOTV I've ever seen we
Carter: we didn't just run you know field we got to 42,000 out of 52,000 houses in a four-week period um I mean
Carter: mean yeah
Carter: yeah
Corey: yeah they
Carter: they come on no one thought we were going to be able to do that um but
Carter: but because we were doing that we were We were stretching Quinton. We were stretching Tara to make sure that we could get the volunteers. You know, Sangeeta was working the phones every day, not calling anybody but volunteers. Corey was working the phones all day, calling the volunteers. Just
Corey: Corey was working the phones
Corey: Just calling volunteers, yeah. Everybody had
Carter: yeah. Everybody had these jobs. What
Zain: had
Zain: jobs. What was Corey doing? Were you thanking them? Were you asking them to do roles? I mean, I was for
Corey: What was Corey
Carter: Corey
Corey: I mean, I was for sure thanking people who had given so much of their time. But I was also calling new volunteers and saying, hey, I see you signed up. Can I sign you? Like, in a general sense, can I sign you up for a shift? How
Zain: How was that? That's an interesting approach. So
Corey: So actually, I've got to say, Shannon Phillips, my friend, the former Energy or Environment Minister here in Alberta, she's the one who really recommended that to me. She said, great use of candidate time. It's harder for people to say no to the candidate as a volunteer, but also it's a multiplier. Go back to the whole concept about scale. So the way I started thinking about it at a certain point, Zane, especially when I was calling those new volunteer lists, is if, you know, so this takes me off the doors for three hours, let's say, right? I miss a door knocking shift. if i sign up three volunteer let's assume i'm three times as effective just by merit of being candidate not because i'm smarter or anything like that yeah because your
Zain: Energy or Environment
Zain: your name is on the signs that's right my name's
Corey: your name is on the
Corey: right my name's on the signs so if i sign up three volunteers over the next three hours it's a push i've got more people that are out there that are getting a win yeah it's a strategic win we're getting more more conversations where everyone after that is gravy and if they show up more than once it's gravy so i i kind of set my own almost like sales force lifetime customer customer value
Zain: that are getting a win yeah it's a strategic
Zain: lifetime customer customer value sort of exactly of
Corey: exactly of course yeah yeah yeah and uh but i truly believe that the multiplier effect of that was significant and because a volunteer might give you the next 12 hours right and that's incredible so um i think it was an important part
Zain: course yeah yeah yeah and
Zain: um running
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Zain: war in a local campaign, Corey. Yeah. Videos, digital, lit. Talk to me about its importance, how it worked how it didn't work uh we often talk about these campaigns being exclusively ground game you're someone with a bit of profile um so maybe not necessarily for you how did you guys approach it how did you approach it as a candidate uh
Corey: okay well so the air war especially at the start we just wanted to make sure that we were like a big serious campaign and just present people to narrow down to like those two options here right that was our main focus and part of that was really showing polish and professionalism and that's where ryan and his videos was like sure holy cow like if you google me and you find our socials these these things looked beautiful they looked like they came out of central campaign right uh and they were done by a volunteer on on this local campaign uh similarly the literature allowed us to get out there in a big way in volume like it really was like we just wanted to make sure there was no missing that we were the show show no matter how you decided to engage with people the videos i was very taken with i thought ryan had a really great and let me just give a special
Zain: just present people
Zain: was our
Zain: uh and
Zain: and let me just give a special shout out to ryan as well because he's also you know you mentioned that he's a guy who or the quality was out of like central campaign it's because he's done central campaign work right he's a guy who's done that's that type of quality work no cadence of all of it right so he's
Corey: no cadence of
Corey: he's well and so he created this concept like of of these explainer videos which you know q a yeah which i really i really liked and and we didn't script those by the way like we just i just talked like and we would usually do two takes and he would cut a couple of things into them and then we would uh he'd be like oh you said this and do you have data on that and i would send him a chart or whatnot and i thought it was a really cool partnership but beyond that it just it made it all feel like very substantive if that's what you were looking for and the number of times on the doors i would end up with a conversation about out the videos or the literature and it just created a bit of a virtuous cycle interesting but what i really do want to make sure i don't
Zain: so he created
Zain: know q a
Zain: i just
Corey: fail to say is uh the
Corey: interesting thing about doors for me is i i have really evolved my theory because we've talked about does door knocking even matter yes
Zain: yes i think critically by the way like like as in concluding it doesn't yeah i i forget who was on which team well i've
Corey: who was
Corey: well i've i've
Corey: i've changed my view a little bit on that i think that door knocking as we've done it for the past five years maybe doesn't but i actually think there's a different way to do it which is well
Zain: think that door
Corey: here's what i want to say about door knocking in 2025 all
Corey: all of the political parties are so algorithm driven right they say i'll use the liberal ones like they'll rank one two three four or five right like the ones are the people we think are almost certainly liberals to the next level out so can
Zain: can i just interrupt you there for a second i mean you're gonna anyway so for clarity this is maybe one of the last times you're gonna have me interrupt you Other than maybe in the House of Commons one day when I run for the conservatives on the other side. What a twist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe you could be my shadow minister one day. Oh, okay. That'd be nice.
Corey: second i mean you're gonna anyway so for clarity this
Corey: have me interrupt you
Corey: What a twist.
Corey: okay.
Corey: That'd be nice.
Zain: When
Zain: you say parties are algorithmic, I think people need to understand this. Those ratings that you just gave those doors, are those provided to you by the party? Yeah. Or are those... Okay, yeah. So I think you can explain that a bit. I don't know if people fully understand that the party provides you an algorithmic rating of what type of, what quality of door you're at versus what people have heard, which is that campaigns are the ones doing that work.
Corey: versus what people
Corey: Well, so it's based on the information that the party has, whether it's the results of the polls last time, maybe you took a sign two elections ago, maybe you've donated before. They waited, they give you a score. we've id'd you in a previous election and um and that from that they say these people are good these people probably not don't waste your time on the probably not the name of the game is get ids let's roll and
Zain: They waited, they give
Corey: and so all the parties do this like to some degree all of the parties do this right i
Corey: think one
Corey: one of the things that was clear and i think in part because we did have a swing from the previous election right that
Corey: that that obsession with that data has led political parties to a place of of making their canvas much have much less purpose you know and it's much less persuasive and so i've become pretty convinced and i shouldn't overlearn lessons from one campaign here but i'll just i'll tell you we
Corey: we had uh you know at a certain point in the campaign we get the direction or the request i suppose a better way to put it because we didn't do it in the final summation of okay now it's time to just talk to your ones and twos like just forget about everybody else let's just move on like yeah persuasion's done that's about get out the vote and we did this for like a day and on that day uh you're skipping over so many houses that you can tell are our people they've got like defend alberta park signs out front or you know they've got a pride flag in the window like no
Zain: yeah persuasion's done that's about
Zain: you know they've got
Zain: window like no uh no provincial pension plan or whatever exactly and
Corey: exactly and
Corey: and you you can tell that they're going to be our people if we can get to them but we're just walking by them and we're also going many many steps or we're even getting in cars between doors oh we're really we're burning a lot of time and so uh i go back and talking to quentin we're talking about the problem and i'm like i don't know man it doesn't feel right and he's like yeah i know it doesn't feel quite right so we ran this experiment where we said forget it we're just we're gonna do i can't remember quentin had a great phrase for it but i forget what it was but basically it's like unless they've already voted because we're now in advanced poll weekend right or unless they have already been canvassed we're gonna hit the door still and we found so many supporters in the the threes, in the fours, in the fives. And that was just because we had a great wave campaign, Mark Carney, right? All of that stuff going on. But it made me think about it more broadly.
Carter: we're
Corey: There's a problem in politics in that universe is narrow. You see this with MPs, right? They come in, they've got a team, that team slowly shrinks over time. We talked about that with Justin Trudeau, right?
Zain: That's
Corey: That's kind of true, I think, of organizations
Corey: organizations too. And the algorithm, I think, is getting us to be like so laser focused on the people already there we are losing so many good opportunities to expand the base and so when i say i don't think the door knocking matters i think what i'm going to say is i don't think that this algorithm driven door knocking is doing us any favors i think this is how political parties die and so get out there spend the time don't be senseless don't go to like 30 doors in a row that are not not there for you but there are ways to do it in various communities uh where i think you can get way more vote you can have meaningful conversations with with people that maybe you thought were decided and they're not and um i i for me like you the last point i'll say on this is so i was talking to esmahan razavi about this she's uh she's an organizer for the ndp she ran two very improbable victories uh simultaneously simultaneously in calgary acadia and calgary glenmore both coming down to just a handful of votes yes and
Zain: simultaneously simultaneously in
Zain: calgary
Zain: yes and
Corey: and so while i'm having these conversations with quentin as well about i don't know these don't feel right i don't like this i you know it was feeling a lot better when we're just hitting every door right i
Corey: say to her well what do you think what if we give this a shot you know this theory that
Zain: this theory that you guys theory not even just for
Corey: you guys theory not even just for the candidate but for everybody yeah yeah yeah and she said oh i did the exact same thing i just like i felt like i was leaving too much meat on the bone so i just i gave up the the numbers the scoring the ndp have a different scoring system but i just went to every door again essentially doing exactly what what quinton had come to the conclusion of as well she had come to the conclusion of and i can't help but note the two very improbable winning campaigns both came to the conclusion algorithms aren't working for us yeah yeah and and carter and i had some chat but i've about why that might be the case particularly in canada but i'm going to stop there because i've been pick
Zain: yeah yeah yeah and she said
SPEAKER_00: to every door
Zain: algorithms aren't working for us yeah yeah
Corey: pick
Zain: pick it up pick it up carter and then also uh take me home on geo tv and why it was so interesting and impressive and then what lessons would you replicate or pass on to others so pick up where cory left off and then let's head into geo tv right after sure
Corey: pick it up pick
Carter: sure i mean i think that the the thing with algorithmic decision making is it requires data and
Carter: and the data that we have in canada is just too thin you know we have an election every four years the provincial parties aren't really feeding information into the federal parties uh there's no municipal campaigns that are feeding information in so you're getting door knocked once every four years and from that information people are trying to uh draw conclusions and between there's no
Corey: between there's no data brokers too right yeah so
Carter: yeah so you're not able to buy the cable company's data you're not able to buy you know like there's so much data that's available in the united states is just simply not available here um you
Carter: know so you're not able to to kind of export that expertise that facebook book has and put them on to every single household in canada and yet we try to and that decision that's made we try to yeah we you know one two three four five i mean cory undersells it fives were outperforming threes fives were almost outperforming twos right like the
Zain: that's made we try to yeah we
Zain: the
Carter: the
Zain: the the that's a great that's that's that's wild that's a great insight but it's also fucking wild yeah well like and i and and and it's the thing is if if this was that was like a sharp criticism of the liberal party i might take it with a grain of salt it's not though it's a criticism of how we collectively do the activity yeah
Carter: collectively
Carter: do the
Zain: yeah everybody
Carter: everybody needs to relearn the lesson of voter identification which then leads us to the gotv do you want me to just to to jump under the gotv cory would you get in
Zain: in a second
Carter: second
Zain: second but
Carter: but
Zain: but maybe it's like can i spend a second on this which is if
Corey: is
Zain: you were if
Zain: you were like the the czar of door knocking or canvas would you hide these scores from campaigns going forward and say like you know and by the way we've got this extra pile of ones in your final weekend that you should also mobilize with and maybe that's not the right approach but i'm kind of curious like how would you action this if cory hogan and stephen carter were developing door knocking from the ground up again no
Corey: i'm kind of curious
Corey: i think um i i think actually carter was saying it right like we've got to relearn the lessons of door knocking and it's it's about it i mean we got to use data data not to the point of senselessness like let's use data to understand where we can go and let's you know you don't want to create overly precise models that are then overly wrong it's just not how it's going to work on a campaign like it should be something that points you in the right direction it shouldn't be driving the car and so some of how you do that zane is you've got to trust some of the people on the ground and some of the candidate intuition and local expertise i don't even mean candidate intuition that makes it sound because i'm a candidate i know better that's not what i mean but like yeah yeah yeah you've got to talk to the volunteers who'd be like well i don't know that street seems okay right like you've got to allow that that kind of flexibility i was having a situation at some point and bobby who's one of our best door knockers he said this right he's like oh i've just been calling audibles you know i see that sign it's not on my list i'm gonna go knock it anyways i'm getting a sign location one out of every three times just because he'd get a vibe from the house and like the location and you see it often enough there's
Zain: see it often enough there's pattern recognition there's other things yeah absolutely and
Corey: other things yeah absolutely and you're like this street's
Zain: you're like this street's good that like there's something to like the the streakiness of a street for example there's a there there right like in both
Corey: example there's a there there right like in both ways like there's a social network that exists so i you know i think that uh i think we do need to take a hard hard look at some of this algo driven stuff and say is it actually serving us and and maybe it was particularly bad in confederation because of a dearth of data from a couple of campaigns that just were not as big not to disparage those campaigns yeah
Zain: i
Zain: yeah yeah but
Corey: but i
Zain: i
Corey: i do think
Zain: think that it was
Corey: was
Zain: was a cautionary
Corey: cautionary tale
Zain: tale
Corey: tale
Zain: carter i I want you to take us home on GeoTV, well, both of you, but before I do that, can I just ask you guys some rapid fire on did you or did you not do this? Sure. You can do anything. You're like
Carter: You can do anything. You're like the host right
Carter: right now.
Zain: Polling.
Zain: No. What?
Zain: Okay. Walk me through, right? Like, super tight writing, like...
Zain: like... Well, what are we going to do with it?
Corey: like...
Corey: Well, what are we going to do with it? Like, how's it going to change our behavior? Yeah.
Zain: Like, how's it going to change our behavior? Yeah. I'm not the one asking the question for my benefit. I'm doing it on behalf of the audience, so don't scold me, okay? You're not going to... There is nothing to change. Remember the time my member of parliament elect scolded me on a podcast, Carter? He was a bit rude. I thought the tone was not great. I thought the tone was not great. Why? Why didn't you do it?
Corey: I'm
SPEAKER_00: bit rude. I thought
Carter: not
SPEAKER_00: not great.
Carter: It would have been a waste of money. It would have slowed us down. We would have been waiting for the results to determine what needed to happen. And quite frankly, between Corey's brain and my ability to act, we had enough.
Zain: Phones.
Zain: Paid external phones, anything like that. Volunteer on the phones. Talk to me about that as a process. says where was it ordered in into the the the triage of door knocking and lit dropping and all the other and signs and etc it was
Carter: was the last 30 so we when we reached our last thirty thousand dollars not that we spent thirty thousand dollars on it but when we reached when we when we fundraised over the 95 that we knew we had to spend that that was the base of the campaign that's when we started to put uh calling in live
Carter: calling yeah
Corey: yeah the door-to-door canvas was certainly the backbone of of this campaign but we then did uh push further with phones as well the thing about door-to-door canvas and i think it's also one of the benefits of it that we haven't talked about is just the visibility and activating all of those volunteers and having them out in the community and having them tell their friends and neighbors like i'm going door knocking was also quite important that's
Carter: then did
Zain: also quite important
Zain: that's true the night that we did that that sort of q a for the or version of the show for the volunteers um i was getting texts all the time including seeing myself yeah group of 10 volunteers Volunteers being like, you know, walking around the city, or people texting, being like, Corey Hogan volunteers just came. Like, what the hell, man? Like, that's crazy. Like, and there's like 10 of them, like, coming to a door. They had not learned yet. They were splintering, that sort of thing. But it was interesting. Like, there was a dimension of air war that the ground game generated, if that's fair. And that
Corey: door.
Corey: that was intentional. Like, that was part of, you go back to that Friday strategy, like, thing I was just talking about. That was go out in big groups. groups cory
Zain: that was
Zain: cory any tactic you guys fought on you guys as in candidate versus campaign uh
Corey: uh i don't think tactics well the ivr the ivr yeah yeah but like beside that like no no like you
Zain: the ivr yeah yeah but like beside that
Zain: like no no like
Zain: you
Corey: you wanted to do it or they wanted to do and you said no they said yes no uh no no i mean like the reality is steven and i have also worked together long enough like we've kind of converged on what we think are effective tactics which is that was
Zain: which is that was a risk yeah
Corey: yeah absolutely for sure one
Zain: sure one that we were thinking about quite constantly no
Corey: no i didn't think about it too much i mean this really was a campaign that felt good most of the time in fact i can't think of a day that felt really bad you know there would be times i'd go get my ass kicked in a community like the doors wouldn't be super super positive but there were also days you asked
Carter: there were also days you asked to have your ass kicked because you had such a good day before that
Corey: because you had such a good day before that is that is true so like this became almost like my leveling out right like you'd be in renfrew and you'd hand out 30 signs and you'd say okay well you better go send me to you
Corey: you know a briar hill. I better go feel like that there is more of the community that's not necessarily as supportive. Yeah.
Zain: that's not necessarily as supportive.
Zain: Carter, talk to me about GeoTV.
Carter: GeoTV is the second
Carter: half of identifying your vote. So once you've identified your vote, you have to make sure that they actually go to vote. And traditionally, what we do is, you know, we drop a postcard in people's mailboxes or something like that that says, your voting station is X, Y, or Z. And then people would go to that voting station and vote and in a really complicated version of it you get um you've got uh you know bingo sheets or some sort of mechanism where you know exactly everybody who voted and that's what kara ran she ran a full data integrated sheet where every night the scrutineers would go in get photographs of the of the bingo sheets the right data would come back she all the data would be entered overnight night and then we would have a new set of people to call and go door knock the next day and she didn't treat advanced polls as one advanced day of voting every day got that full treatment so that by the time that we got to running the election day we had tone you know treated
SPEAKER_00: right data
Zain: treated we had trained several gotv days in the can well we also
Corey: well we also had banked a lot of vote like we should get But from process alone,
Zain: should get But from process alone, from process alone, it was a well-lubricated machine. Oh,
Corey: machine. Oh, most certainly. But
Zain: But from outcome, I think it's a fair point, obviously, that you, and I want to talk about the night of and the votes coming in. We won about 3
Corey: But from
Carter: won about 3,500, we knew that we had about 3,500, 4,000 people who voted during advanced polls. We won advanced polls by a number just a little under that. So, you know, it was a monster when you look back on it. those advanced polls that those binger sheets of gotv and then to run it again on
Carter: on the day of and have people doing knock and pulls so door knocking people and telling
Carter: telling them to get their asses to the polls because we know that they haven't voted i mean that is a unbelievable feat and and cara was running that all day long and updating it all the way through to our i think our last shift was 3 30 in the evening yeah
SPEAKER_00: updating it all
Carter: yeah or in the afternoon 3 30 or 5 30 in the afternoon no
Corey: no we it was pretty late Like, we were running right to the wire there. Okay,
Zain: Okay, so talk to me. I want to finish off here. So let me set the stage. You have this party, and I'll set the stage of what I saw, right? Sure. You have this party, hundreds of people watching the CBC at a restaurant. There's food. There's drinks. People are, like, eagerly referring. Everyone's on their phone, not because they're antisocial, but because that's the only way to get the writing-level results, right? You know, Ryan's got a photo booth set up where people are taking photos. There's confet signs. There's buttons, etc. etc. I'm there because of my massive contributions and to talk to the media about your campaign on standby. But you are not there. Carter's not there. Heather's not there. The elements of the core team are not there. Talk to me about the parallel of what your night was and what you guys were doing, how it felt, honest reflections, what you were up to. I'm really curious. And then how the night went.
Corey: Sure. You
Corey: So I'll just tell you, the players were myself, my wife, Lori, and Stephen in in one room you know kind of watching things and looking at results come in on steven's computer yeah
Zain: yeah and across the street and interpreting them
Corey: and across the street and interpreting them and then yes across the street and then a couple of rooms down this was at the hotel uh were heather and cara who were like getting the scrutiny reports in the geo
Zain: geo tv
Corey: tv work yeah and they're entering the data there and it's then showing up on steven's computer i have to give steven some pretty insane props here i really do and it it's uh not something that comes naturally to me but he told me a couple days before the election he just texted me he's like i made a model and so i i immediately call of course and he's i'm like you got to tell me about the model what's going on here he said well based on my model i think you win by three percent and i said yeah he's steven he's terrible at predictions as far as i'm concerned right so that's
Zain: yeah and they're
Zain: as i'm concerned
Zain: that's fine this is where we insert all the terrible predictions he's made if we have time yeah
Corey: that's fine this is
Carter: jeb bush needs to survive this primary and compete in a general Jeb Bush is not surviving this primary. He's totally surviving this primary. Mark it down on your calendar, okay? Stephen Carter said today, Jeb Bush is the guy. But
Corey: today,
Zain: today,
Corey: today,
Zain: today,
Corey: today,
Zain: today,
Corey: Jeb
Corey: he's gone poll by poll and given a score, essentially, from they're going to win by 20 points to we're going to win by 20 points in 10-point increments, you know, and just assigned to each of them. And there are hundreds of polls, of course. Now, it wasn't 100% accurate. Poll by poll. Poll by poll. but in aggregate it was very good and so from my point of view as we're sitting there getting the scrutiny reports we are seeing areas come into varsity and they're they're doing better than we thought oh that's really cool oh and then here comes winston heights and that's a little worse than we thought but okay you know we can live with that because then here's it a bit
Zain: Poll by
Zain: then here's it a bit yeah yeah
Corey: yeah
Corey: yeah yeah and then exactly and so as we're coming through we're able to sort of assess where we are relative to expectation because the top line number tells you nothing like if all of the vote has come in from our best areas and we're winning by five, we're actually pretty screwed. But if all of the voters come in from our worst areas and we're only down by five, that's
Corey: that's workable, right? So because we had this sheet, we were able to look through it and just identify where we were relative to our expectations and relative to our strength. And I'm telling you what was many hours, but we, you know, we had it over time. And every now and then we do a count, like how many of our quote-unquote good polls are coming in versus the quote-unquote bad polls and we would kind of do a bit of a gut check well
Corey: well listen long story short here the polls that come in last are the advanced polls and we had a theory of the campaign that we were going to win those and yes we were actually doing fine we were tracking to carter's model pretty well like through the day of polls a little bit down but not like not not enough to quote-unquote well not enough to lose right we We thought, okay. We didn't,
Carter: We thought, okay. We didn't, we knew we weren't losing.
Corey: We're like, ah, this looks okay. But it's all hinged on us being right that the advanced polls favored
Zain: the
Carter: the advanced polls
Zain: polls favored
Zain: favored us, right?
Corey: right? Right. So
Corey: So I was, you know, I was a little worried, but people were texting me being like, oh my God, the roller coaster. We were riding a different ride. We were riding a very dated one. Than us. Oh yeah. That's right. Right.
Zain: a very dated one. Than us. Oh yeah. That's right. Right. Yeah.
Corey: Yeah. So when, when there's like people texting me on crazy highs, cause the polls have me up like really high, we're not seeing that high. So I'm like, we'll see. It's still early. I wouldn't overreact to that. And that you're kind of giving like boilerplate. responses kind
Zain: wouldn't overreact to that. And that you're kind of giving like boilerplate. responses kind of coming down meanwhile
Corey: kind of coming down meanwhile when it's getting the other way and it's flipping we're down a few votes we're like we're not too worried about it right now it's
Corey: it's okay like it's coming in as projected and
Zain: in as projected
Corey: and then when the first couple of advanced polls came in and they were as expected and
Corey: they were from a couple of different areas and these are this
Zain: and these are this is the coordination between karen heather to carter that's
Corey: that's right and then it that's when i started to be like okay i think we have this and then and more and more came in and you know i still wasn't a hundred percent but But Carter was at this point, I think, pretty close to it being like, no, come on, like, we've got it. We're good. We're awesome. And so we knew, we knew to a level of confidence where we were standing well beyond what the average viewer who's just looking at the randomness or which polls have come in on Elections Canada. Right, right.
Zain: then it that's
Zain: right. And
Corey: And that
Corey: also is a hallmark of a really strong campaign. It's not even something that changes the outcome, but because we had that sophisticated organization that Kara had created, and because we had the model that Steven had created, we were pretty good. And there was one poll out, two polls outstanding when I went down to talk to everybody, I think. Right?
Corey: And we knew we'd won. Like, we were still being like, unless something weird happens, but we knew we'd won. and
Corey: and uh we just had to wait for them to come in and wait for the rest of the networks to call it because some of like uh the globe and mail called it and toronto star called it but the you know cbc hadn't called it they didn't call it till the final poll came in but the level of sophistication was again as good as i've ever seen and it was very very exciting it was very cool and um yeah
Corey: and and then we had a celebration at that banquet in university district which is also by the way where i saw team canada win the four nations cup so good energy there and uh yeah
Corey: i mean steven for all of the crap we give you on predictions you predicted within like one percent the outcome of that election yeah
Carter: yeah it was a pretty well it was a little
Carter: tighter than we wanted it to be especially on the election day polls but the uh advanced polls pulled us through
Zain: let me end on this final question i'll get both of you to weigh in on uh and then we'll call it a wrap here um How
Zain: do you keep this movement alive?
Zain: And maybe the premise is you don't. Like, it's a very viable path to say this was purpose-built for an outcome. But in other ways, I go back to the first question around the convergence between the pod and the Discord and the campaign and in front of the doors and beside the doors and all the other things that have now been subsequently added in four weeks. It started at this very different campaign between day one and day 35, right?
Zain: How do you keep it alive? Do you keep it alive? Corey, I'll let you jump in first and then Carter. Yeah,
Corey: I mean, how do you turn a moment into a movement?
Corey: One in three Calgarians voted for the Liberal Party. I might have ended up being the only elected Liberal MP, but
Zain: but more
Corey: more people voted for the Liberals in this province than they have, as we said, in
Corey: in literal generations. So there is a moment here. There's something to capture. There's like some lightning that needs to be bottled. and i think that the liberal party needs to do it i think that progressive calgarians need to do it whether you're capital p progressive living on the south side of the writing or you're progressive conservative living on the north side of the writing there is an opportunity here to chart a different course than we've been on and um there are going to be so many different distractions it's such an important time for the country that's kind of why i'm running or ran i guess and how it's past tense um but we can't lose focus on the fact that there is a chance for a changing calgary to project
Carter: project itself differently so i
Corey: i don't really know the answer with clarity at this moment but i know we need to turn that moment into a movement and so that'll be a part of my job i think over the next few years carter
Carter: so that'll
Zain: that'll
Zain: carter
Corey: carter
Zain: carter
Zain: carter
Corey: carter one person
Zain: person who has no shortage of clarity steven carter well
Carter: well i mean this is uh similar to what i did at the beginning of my career when i was I was working for Joe Clark and he was an MP for Calgary Center. You have to win the second election. You know, it's one thing to win the first election. There's a lot of people who have won the first election. Winning the second election is super hard. And the first thing is you need to make sure that you are seen as a member of the group, right? Corey has to be seen to be part of Calgary Confederation and part of Calgary in general because he can't just be the Confederation MP. He's got to be the Calgary MP. And the second thing that he needs to do is build an organization that can sustain that. whether that's the staffing in his office uh the staffing in ottawa the staffing or the volunteer structure that needs to come to play uh it will be a significant operation um from the beginning of of the term uh you know we it's kind of been fun we've all taken a break um and i don't mean a break break because i know that cory's been working really hard on making writing notes and doing all the things that need to be done but it's been a break but in in about a
SPEAKER_00: notes
Carter: week the next phase begins and that over that next that next phase is going to be measured in organizational structure how many people are involved and frankly how much money is being raised uh because there needs to be like when you have like michelle rempel garner uh you know has organized and created an organizational structure that was and is bigger than just her um
Corey: and that over that
Carter: um cory cory's campaign was bigger than just cory we were able to participate in at least two other campaigns uh one of which wound up being a winner um because of cory's unbelievable fundraising capacity so there's a lot more for us to do uh it just doesn't start today lessons
SPEAKER_00: to participate in
Zain: to be learned people to be thanked to movement to be built cory sincerely congratulations steven Thank you, sir. Not so sincerely. Congratulations. Thank you. You guys, as a collective, that team did an incredible job. And we are going to leave it there. That's a wrap on episode 1866 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen
Carter: Thank you. You
Corey: You guys,
Zain: Stephen Carter, and we shall see you
Corey: you next time.
Zain: Running
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