Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

By Jill Sperling

Election 2020

Provincial election providing a lesson in campaigning during a pandemic

Oct 6, 2020 | 4:48 PM

KAMLOOPS — Campaign signs have been popping up around Kamloops, reminding residents that a provincial election is just around the corner. But, this is no normal campaign period.

“It’s a totally different world,” said Tom Friedman, communications coordinator for Kamloops-South Thompson NDP candidate Anna Thomas. “I’ve been involved in a number of different campaigns and a lot of the features that we rely on for our candidate to be able to engage with voters are gone. Door-knocking, you know, we just can’t do that now in these COVID times.”

Thomas will be without a campaign office due to safety concerns around COVID-19, but Friedman says they will be making every effort to engage with the community.

“We’re relying a lot on social media, of course,” he said, “but we’re also relying on events where there’s good appropriate physical distancing, our Burma Shaves, where we have the candidate waving to potential voters. We did that this morning up at Summit and Columbia.”

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In addition to the pandemic, some parties have been having to play catch-up.

“This campaign is extremely short,” said Matt Greenwood, campaign manager for Kamloops-North Thompson Green Party candidate Thomas Martin. “Honestly, our first week was taken up just trying to make sure that as many of our candidates as possible actually got nominated, getting their nomination signatures and everything. Normally there’s a little bit more time to handle that, but in this case we had a week to do everything.”

Greenwood says Martin’s campaign will depend on social media and word of mouth.

“A lot of interpersonal power once we find volunteers who can reach out, branch out from there,” Greenwood said. “It will be a lot of basically friends getting friends involved or getting the message out to each other.”

While some are choosing not to set up campaign officer, Kamloops Liberal Party candidates Todd Stone and Peter Milobar are sharing a limited capacity space and campaign manager Henry Pejril.

“The traditional way was the old campaign office where you had 15-to-20 phones all down the one bank and it was always busy and noisy and now everybody’s doing it from home,” Pejril said. “We’re giving lists to individuals who are calling from their houses. It’s a very disjointed system, but we’re making it work.”

This is the eighth campaign Pejril has been involved with, and one of the most tricky.

“This feels very much like my very first one where you’re just learning and trying to figure a way around and through things and how to make things work.”