Leaving Vancouver after "a green come true"

Captain's Log - the day after...

It was a long and arduous campaign, and I was only in Vancouver for the last week of it! But friends, today we can all say that we won. Here Dan essentially tripled the Green vote in Quadra from the last federal election, an incredible feat no other party can lay claim to. The growth of the Green vote is simply put remarkable (see Jim Harris' blog: http://greenparty.ca/en/node/4167)

Personally, I can't begin to describe how amazing of an experience this was for me. It was my first campaign, and as such proved to be both an immense learning experience as well as an incredible challenge. Being part of Dan's campaign will forever be a source of pride for me!

But what exactly can we take from this by-election? As a number of others have mentioned, we can clearly see the electoral momentum is in our favour from the results in Quadra, as well as each of the other by-elections held yesterday; we now have even greater grounds upon which to claim a spot for Elizabeth in the debates; we won over 10% which means that Dan's campaign will be reimbursed 60% by Elections Canada; and we can take pride that we are the fact that each candidate held a tremendous campaign.

In addition to that, I'd like to add how much we can learn from these campaigns. We are now in a position to seriously scrutinize and assess each campaign both qualitatively and quantitatively to see what worked, what didn't, why and how. I hope to very much be an integral component in this assessment. It's value will transcend into all future campaigns for all Green Party candidates and campaign teams. Now that is valuable!

Well, since everyone has been publishing numbers, I may as well publish mine:

- 7 days in Vancouver Quadra
- 6 polls literature dropped = 1200+ pieces of literature
- 10+ hours of sign waving = hundreds of honking cars
- 6 blogs = 1200+ hits
- 400+ phone calls on GRIMES including GOTV
- 1 parade
- Tens of great Green warriors met
- 13.5% of the vote won
- (I'm sorry in advance); The experience: priceless.

Thanks to everyone who took time to read the blog, to come out and support Dan and the Green Party, to everyone who honked in their cars, who smiled or who waved.

I'm leaving because there are 307 more ridings to win and winning would be, as I heard last night "a green come true", but I leave this beautiful Green province reluctantly, and I will miss you all!