Nanaimo—Alberni 2011

Candidate's Application
NAME/NOM: Jesse Schroeder

PROVINCE: BC

RIDING/CIRCONSCRIPTION: Nanaimo-Alberni

PARTY INVOLVEMENT / PARTICIPATION DE PARTI:

Currently a member.

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE / L'EXPÉRIENCE POLITIQUE:

Involved to a minor degree in other campaigns. Studied political science at Vancouver Island University. Know many people ie media.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST / CONFLITS D'INTÉRÊTS:

No conflicts.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT / PARTICIPATION DE LA COMMUNAUTÉ:

Past President of Malaspina Radio Society (VIU campus station, Nanaimo - CHLY-FM) Past president and vice-president of the Parksville, B.C. Kinsmen. Youth mentor for at risk youths - Family Resources Assn., Parksville, B.C. Parksville Community Centre Society - past chair - succeeded in getting new community centre built. Active in media (radio). Well known, area born and raised. 32 years old.

PLATFORM / MANIFESTE:

Basic Pirate Party positions, fall back to Libertarian. Main interests education, patents, transparency.

To Top

Director's Evaluation
(where applicable, include Director's interview/evaluation)

To Top

Official Agent Information
(include basic info here)

To Top

Official Auditor Information
(include basic info here)

To Top

Event Dates & Information
(info on any events, volunteer meetings, battle planning)

To Top

Collateral and Advertising Materials
(image links to all posters, brochures, etc)

To Top

Volunteer List
(list of volunteers, if available)

To Top

Voting Results

 * align="left" colspan=6|Conservative hold
 * align="left" colspan=6|Conservative hold

To Top

Post-Election Reports
Author: Greg Boulter – I am/was the official agent for Jesse in the 2012 Canadian Federal Election.

Approximately 6 months ago I approached Jesse who was then the President of the Malaspina Radio Association (Vancouver Island University campus radio) with the idea of being a candidate in Nanaimo for the Pirate Party of Canada. After he initially said that he didn’t think so he did some research and agreed that I could look into it. When I investigated I found that Jake Daynes was the prospective (and approved) candidate already and so we abandoned the idea. When the election was called we contacted Jake to offer our services as volunteers, support, etc but Jake told us he had moved to Vancouver and was no longer a candidate.

We thought about it and decided that 3 weeks wasn’t all that long to take off from life and devote to the political process and decided to try and get the money and signatures. We had about three days and we did it and registered with Elections Canada on the final day allowed.

Jesse attended every all-candidates meeting (as opposed to invited-candidates meetings, of which there were two). We were by far the stars of the events, Jesse is a decent public speaker and the only one with any stage presence. The Parksville Qualicum News gave Jesse great praise and was indicative of the response we got from the media.

“Best public speaker: Jesse Schroeder of the Pirate Party. No hope of winning, but articulate and personable enough to get his message about access to information out to the public. He would make a great politician. Too bad he’s not one likely to join a mainstream party. He also could hold onto the most inspiring title in this riding.”

We completely overwhelmed the other parties at the Port Alberni High school and Vancouver Island University meetings. We had posters printed and people were almost fighting over them – definitely the public speaking events were the high points.

After we took over the Port Alberni High School we weren’t allowed at the Parksville High School meeting (these were meetings for students too young to vote so it stands to reason that pirates sound good). The word from the Civics 11 students in Port Alberni was that we had got by far the majority of the votes from the approx 300 student – enough to defeat the purpose of seeing how student voting mirrored the actual election. Jesse went there and was physically prevented from entering (didn’t cause a scene but made a point later followed up by the local newspapers resulting in an apology from the school authorities).

We were also denied a spot on the Nanaimo televised debate at the Nanaimo Convention Center. The local Chamber of Commerce and the Young Professionals of Nanaimo decided not to allow the public entrance, nor live questions but opened the auditorium to VIU students. The Pirate Party was not invited – specifically not invited, along with the Marxist-Leninists and the Christian Heritage Party candidates.

The students boycotted it (we are popular on campus) and the theatre was close to empty. We went in before the television coverage started, Jesse took a spot at the table, made a nice name plate like the other “major” party candidates had and waited for the meeting to start. Jesse is popular with the other candidates so they thought it was OK with them and made ready to start.

Before the cameras went live Jesse was approached by two young fellows from the Young Professionals and asked to leave. Jesse politely stated our case, they were genuinely sorry because I don’t think they had realized that we were not a one-issue party and that we were polite, well-behaved, intelligent and serious. We left a few minutes before the cameras went live with dignity having been maintained on both sides but a definite point made, not the least was that they can expect no student support if they ban us.

There was another event the Saturday before the election – the “Coalition against Harper” at the Diana Krall Plaza. It was billed as “all-candidates” but the organizer was NDP and the NDP spoke before the event was almost over while we got the spot after the music stopped and people were leaving – they hadn’t provided a spot for us even though they knew we were coming and only by directly asking when our spot was did we even get one.

We didn’t keep track of our gas and food (the gas was probably substantial because we had to drive about 100 miles three times, and 50 miles 6 or more times just to attend the meetings, etc. We spent about $700 – $500 at CHLY-FM (campus radio) and $200 on posters and flyers. Debts are paid, software installed and in the very near future I will have completed all paperwork that our auditor requires.

About 350 people voted for us – the last time I checked it was about 0.6% of the total. Some polls were quite a bit higher, some lower. This percentage is about the same as the other Pirate Party candidates ranging from about 0.3% in Vancouver to 1% in Prince George.

When the Libertarians ran a candidate or there was an independent candidate the percentages were low. We had neither and when I added the Libertarians and independent candidates total to ours they seemed to come to between 0.6% and 1%. My conclusion is that as things stand there seems to be about 1% of the people who will vote for parties and people like us. This is as I suspected, especially since there was no real warning for the election, we weren’t ready since we are a new party, therefore there was no real time to work on getting people to register – I feel this is very important because the majority of our support “on the street” is from people who don’t usually (or ever) vote. In 1969 Hunter S Thompson was involved in the “Battle of Aspen” where their strategy was to get out the “freak” vote. Ultimately they lost the election (by 6 votes) but the article that Thompson wrote outlined their methods of getting the “freak vote”.

From Wikipedia – “Though unsuccessful, the Edwards campaign was notable for its attempt to garner nearly all of its support from ‘freaks’, ‘heads’, and ‘dropouts’ from the surrounding areas – Freak Power, as it was dubbed.”

I think the Pirate Party should adopt the same tactics only perhaps adapt with a more modern “get out the Geek vote” slant. We can with added name recognition increase the votes that we get but the area where we can really gain percentage is by getting out people who don’t vote. The actual article by Hunter S. Thompson should be read by all our candidates (all members for that matter), in my opinion.

During our campaign we picked up volunteers who are demonstrably serious and are eager to help starting now. We tended to appeal to technically oriented people and have quite a list of talent that wants to be used. To keep this core base we need to have something for them to do and we are trying to put together a scenario which enables us to leverage this talent pool to achieve Pirate Party positive infrastructure so that future elections find us ready to go with a political machine in place for candidates – be they Federal, Provincial, University or local.

To Top

Return to Federal Election 2011