Wildrose Party on the verge of missing another deadline

Further confirmation today that the Wildrose Party's registration petition is in trouble:

... party organizer (and senator-elect) Link Byfield tells me the party is now one-third of the way to collecting the 6,000 signatures it needs to become official.

2,000 measly signatures?

What happened to the "overwhelming positive response" Rob James was boasting about in the July 7 edition of the National Post?

This admission from Link Byfield basically confirms the prediction I made back on September 9. There is no way the Wildrose Party is going to meet its self-imposed September 30 deadline. The September 30 deadline came about when the Wildrose Party announced its "new plan" on September 5. The September 5 plan, which replaced the plan that had been in effect for July and August, asked members to blindly "commit 2 hours over the next 3 weeks." The Wildrose Executive predicted that the plan would result in successful completion of the petition so long as enough members agreed to take up the 2 hour challenge. Given that the total number of signatures gathered remains far short of the registration benchmark of 6,004, it is clear that few members responded positively to the Executive's plea, and the mysterious "new plan" has proven to be a flop, just like the first plan.

I hope Wildrose Party members have learned some lessons from what has transpired here. Albertans aren't stupid, and do not appreciate it when politicians treat them disrespectfully. The Party Executive is to blame for this fiasco, and, assuming the Party remains unregistered by the date of the convention on October 26, the Wildrose membership should demand an explanation from the Executive as to what went wrong here.

It seems clear to me that the Wildrose members are no longer responding to the current Executive, so it may be time to consider what changes need to be made in the Executive suite.

Incidentally, the main thrust of Terry O'Neill's blog post was to congratulate the Wildrose Party for coming out against the recommendations contained in the final report of the Alberta Royalty Review Panel. I am still considering this report, but am prepared to go on record now and state that it is abundantly clear to me that Rob James hasn't read the report, or doesn't understand it.

I wish to thank him for handing me such a lightweight and feckless response to a such a complex and important issue. I intend on using the Wildrose Party's news release as a club, and will be beating them over the head with it in the months to come - rhetorically of course.

Who is in charge of the Wildrose Party's registration drive?

The first edition of the Wildrose Weekly was published on July 6, 2007. In it, readers were introduced to the Wildrose Party's new Vice-President Membership, Sharon Maclise:

Sharon's summer project -- recruit a new political party

Many people have summer projects, but few are as challenging as the one taken on by Sharon Maclise of Edmonton.

Sharon is vice-president membership for the fledgling Wildrose Party of Alberta, and must collect 7,000 signatures by the end of August to register the new party with Elections Alberta. She is one of 13 executives elected at the party's formation meeting two weekends ago.

"That number 7,000 doesn't sound so big -- until you think of collecting them one person at a time," says Sharon.

But Maclise knows how to get things done. She came to Alberta as high school teacher from Saskatchewan in 1972, and switched to real estate six years later. She now runs her own real estate management and development company.

Sharon was not only willing but eager to dedicate her summer to this Wildrose Party membership-building campaign. "Like many, many Albertans, I have been looking for good people who can effect positive change," she explains. "I have now found them and I think thousands of Albertans will soon realize that they have found them, too - in this new party." ...

... Instead of standing with a clipboard outside shopping malls herself all summer, she's hopeful lots of others will pitch in. "We just need everyone to do a little bit," she says.

This is Sharon's plan, based on the simple fact that everyone probably knows at least a few other interested people. ...

The document then goes on to describe the particulars of "Sharon's plan". Based on the foregoing, there is no doubt as to who was in charge of the registration drive. It was the VP Membership, Sharon Maclise.

Is this still the case?

I am in receipt of private Wildrose Party documentation that tends to show that it is actually the Executive Director, Link Byfield, who is now running the registration drive. The correspondence in my possession indicates that Byfield has become the de facto VP Membership, or, at the very least, has assumed control over a critical portion of the duties of the VP Membership.

I have already blogged about the alarming rate at which the Wildrose Executive is shrinking. Now, it would appear that the current VP Membership has had the core part of her duties assumed by the Executive Director, rendering her a titular member of the Executive only. I cannot opine as to whether Sharon Maclise voluntarily gave up her role at the end of August, or whether Link Byfield simply began asserting himself as the one in charge of the registration drive. My information is not that specific.

I can state with confidence that beneath the surface, there are simmering tensions amongst the Wildrose Executive over this issue.

New deadline looms

I wish to mention that the September 5 edition of the Wildrose Weekly also represents the beginning of a countdown to a new, self-imposed deadline. The "new plan" asks members to blindly "commit two hours over the next three weeks". A three week period beginning on September 5 would expire on or about September 26.

Let us be generous in our interpretation and give them until the end of the month. The Wildrose Party is now stating that they will have the signatures necessary to register the party by September 30, 2007.

I will go on record again and predict that they will miss this deadline, just as they missed the first one.

How can I know this?

Well, there is no way to be sure, but I am detecting signs and signals that things are not going very well at all. This party is in trouble ...

... and the blame lies with those at the top.

Sleazy sales tactics dominate Wildrose Party's registration drive

For this plan to succeed, however, we need you -- personally -- to commit two hours over the next three weeks. Will you? If yes, we'll explain exactly how you can help the Wildrose Party get this done.

Please tell us by email (info@wildroseparty.ca) if you think the Wildrose Party is worth two hours of your own time.

The above paragraphs come from the latest edition of the Wildrose Weekly. I first blogged about this passage here.

I found this passage annoying the first time I read it, but couldn't quite put my finger on exactly what it was about it that bothered me. I have just figured it out.

This passage is a perfect example of a manipulative sales tactic called the commitment question. It is one of the ways used to get people to do things or buy things that they would not ordinarily be interested in. It is a manipulative psychological technique; the idea behind it is that once you get a person to say "yes" to your initial request, it is far more difficult for them to back out when you expound on what you are asking them to do. The target of this technique is more hesitant to decline to participate because it makes them feel as if they are welching on a previously made commitment.

Analyze the structure of the passage I have reproduced. The Wildrose Party is first getting its members to agree to a commitment of 2 hours, then it will provide the details to its members as to what they are being asked to do. The commitment is made when the email is sent in, but there is no way a member can know what they are committing to.

If the details of the plan amount to an activity the Wildrose member is not comfortable with - such as aggressively soliciting signatures at a seniors' residence - they then face a dilemma. They either have to back out of the commitment to donate time to the party, or they can hold their nose and unwillingly go through with whatever unsavoury action the Wildrose Executive has dreamed up.

It would be a better practice and more ethical if the Wildrose Executive gave the members details of the "new plan" up front, so that they can decide if they wish to partake in the process or not. As such, I hereby call on Link Byfield and the rest of the Wildrose Executive to (i) abandon this "commitment question" approach, (ii) publish the full details of the new plan referenced in the most recent Wildrose Weekly, and (iii) stop these attempts at duping the membership.

The Wildrose Party admits its registration drive is a bust

The latest edition of the Wildrose Weekly is out. It confirms the accuracy of the prediction I made in my August 28 post, namely, that the Wildrosers have not gathered the signatures necessary to register the party:

Action breeds success

Media attention is good, says president James, but by itself is worth little. "A party has to be more than a news story, and more than a private discussion group. A party is a network of effective volunteers in which everyone helps a little. No volunteers, no party. It's as simple as that."

August has ended finding us well short of the 7,000 signatures we need to register as a party. If this is not solved now it will become a serious problem.

Without provincial registration, we can do nothing. We can't issue tax receipts or identify our candidates on the ballot.

Sounds serious, but wait:

... we ... have a new plan. Now that we know exactly how much work is involved, and the fastest way to gather signatures, we can organize it so that nobody has to give it more than a couple hours.

For this plan to succeed, however, we need you -- personally -- to commit two hours over the next three weeks. Will you? If yes, we'll explain exactly how you can help the Wildrose Party get this done.

Please tell us by email (info@wildroseparty.ca) if you think the Wildrose Party is worth two hours of your own time.

I wonder if this "new plan" will be any better than the comedy of errors the Wildrose brain trust has orchestrated to date. For those who haven't been following, I'll review some of the registration tactics that have come to light so far (after all, this stuff never gets old):

• First, the Wildrosers tried to recruit Alberta Alliance members to their cause by emailing them a donation solicitation email, and asking that they join the Wildrose Party. That plan backfired when Alliance President Randy Thorsteinson got ahold of the email and informed the AA membership that the Wildrosers had gotten their email addresses from a confidential list that had been misappropriated by one or more of the former Alliance politicos whose names appeared on the email.
• Then, on August 28, the Wildrose Party sent out an email to their own members asking them to start sneaking into apartment buildings and going door to door soliciting signatures using an aggressive, high pressure, sales script (while denying that this approach amounted to soliciting).

For the sake of the Wildrose members who answer this latest plea for help, I hope the "new plan" is more ethical and efficacious than either of these boneheaded approaches.

Just so you are aware, the last provincial party to successfully complete a registration petition was the Alberta Alliance in 2002. I understand that Randy Thorsteinson approached that task by hiring a marketing firm to go out and get the necessary signatures. He obtained over 10,000 signatures that way.

Perhaps the Wildrose Party Board should have done the same with its funds, rather than use them up putting the Executive Director and Operations Manager on the payroll.

Just a thought.

Wildrose Party stuck in a rut?

I notice that the Alberta Spectator has a post up entitled Wildrose Party moving ahead. In his post, Werner Patels reproduces a rather desperate sounding email from the Wildrose Party:

Albertans are in a remarkable political mood

An astonishing poll this week from Cameron Strategy in Calgary shows that undecided voters are now the largest group in Alberta (37%).

The Stelmach Conservatives have dropped to 32%. That's down from 54% in January. Liberals, NDP, Greens and Alliance are all stalled. Highest place are the Liberals, unchanged at 16%. The Alberta Alliance remains at 5%, down from 9% in 2004 election.

This poll does not bode well for anyone -- except the Wildrose Party.

An "undecided" response above 20% is considered high -- politically, it means things might change. Thirty-seven percent is virtually unheard of. It means there's a huge political vacuum which no existing party has been able to fill.

"Now is the time," says Wildrose president Rob James of Calgary. "Now is the time for our members to spread the message that the party Albertans want is on the way."

Spreading the message is easy.

It starts with signatures to register the party. Go down your street, into your office, or through a nearby apartment building, and gather signatures to register the party with Elections Alberta. (Apartment blocks are easy and very fast. Just ask any resident to let you in, and go from door to door. Remember, you are collecting signatures for a government form, not selling or soliciting.)

Follow the easy tips below.

1. Download a form from the Wildrose Party Web site
http://www.wildroseparty.ca/main/pdf/Registration_Petition.pdf.
(Or click on "petition form" in the Web site's left margin.)

2. Door to door signature gathering

You: Hi. (BIG smile) Are you an eligible Alberta voter? (This is the only question that you need answered – if this is yes, it starts the conversation on a positive note. If the reply is no, it allows you to say "thanks, have a nice day" and move along right away.)

Prospect: Yes.

You: We are in the process of registering a new Alberta political party. The Electoral Office requires 6000 Alberta elector signatures to complete this registration. Your signature does not commit you to anything and you are not endorsing anything. You are just helping us to complete this requirement. Do you mind helping us out? It will only take a second of your time.

You: (After they have signed): Just in case you want to know more about the new party here is their website address (have it on a slip of paper). They have a really nice website.

Thanks very much. Have a great day.

It's important not to give them an opportunity to use the word “No”, and not to engage in lengthy discussion. If you notice, they only have that chance once, after “help us out”, but all you have to do is move to the next friendly, encouraging line really quickly. For example, if they say, "Why do we need another party?" just say, "We're just getting the party registered. Democracy is about choice, right?"

Try it on your friends and ask them how easy it is for them to say “No” to this approach.

Unless you know the person personally, little purpose is served in political discussion. If they are genuinely interested in the party, they will visit the Web site. Your purpose is to gather signatures, not sell party memberships to strangers.

What a farce! The Wildrosers' registration drive has degenerated into something resembling a sleazy, door to door, vacuum cleaner sales pitch.

One has to question why such tactics are necessary, given that Wildrose Party President Rob James was quoted in a July 7 National Post article saying that the Wildrose Party had been greeted by an "overwhelming positive response":

"We're getting overwhelming positive response to this," reports Rob James, president of the Wild Rose party. "We're hearing from all over the province, both rural and urban, from people in the PC party," disgruntled, he says, by a party seen as ruled by elites and neglectful of its grassroots.

The Progressive Conservatives recently had a leadership vote, in which well over 100,000 Albertans took out a membership in the PC Party and voted. If the Wildrose Party was making such "overwhelming" inroads amongst PC members, they would easily have obtained the 6,004 signatures necessary for their petition by now.

I also found this interesting:

Apartment blocks are easy and very fast. Just ask any resident to let you in, and go from door to door. Remember, you are collecting signatures for a government form, not selling or soliciting.

Seems like soliciting to me. They are breaching apartment security, knocking on the tenants' doors without an invite, and then soliciting signatures after giving a sales spiel.

Furthermore, I note that at no time in the example dialog contained in the email, do the Wildrosers admit to being "conservative" or "right wing". In fact, the email warns against wasting time with "political discussion". Part of the propaganda surrounding the creation of this party is the idea that there is a vast pool of non-voting Albertans out there who are staying away from the polls because there isn't a true right wing party to vote for. If this is so, why not state up front what the Wildrose Party is all about?

So, I see things rather differently than Werner Patels. In fact, based on the tactics they have been adopting lately, it appears to me that the Wildrose Party is going to miss their own self-imposed deadline of August 30, 2007 to submit their petition. That deadline was set out in the July 7 edition of the Wildrose Weekly:

We want to submit our 7,000 names to Elections Alberta by August 30, so we can be a duly registered party in good time for our founding Wildrose Party General Assembly October 26/27 at the Palace Banquet hall in south Edmonton.

In fact, I will go on record now and officially make this prediction.