A puzzling election-night Brownout

Was he being petulant or proud — or was he pouting?
Whatever the reason, Kamloops-North Thompson NDP candidate Doug Brown was acting mighty odd on election night for someone who wanted to represent the people.
The man who would be MLA, the man who carried the flag of the party long known as that which champions the ordinary voter, essentially shut out the public throughout the day and night, refusing to speak to reporters and only granting his supporters a concession speech as the clock inched toward 11 at night.
Perhaps Brown was simply heeding the advice of Salomé Cerqueira and the rest of the campaign staff from Ontario as he watched Liberal Terry Lake ride to victory.
This would be the political gang that couldn’t shoot straight, as evidenced by its inability to discern between a mill that had burned down and one that had been closed due to economic conditions.
Whatever the reason for Brown’s reluctance to interact with those he wished to represent, it was a poor decision.
And it was an attitude highlighted even more by the gracious demeanour offered by Tom Friedman, the Kamloops-South Thompson NDP candidate who lost to Liberal Kevin Krueger.
While Brown became the reclusive political spider, Friedman offered a wide web of access, inviting KTW into his living room as Krueger’s lead increased and making sure to be at Krueger’s campaign headquarters at a decent hour to offer congratulations and his help.
The tale of two candidates was instructive — the margin of victory doesn’t account for the margin of error in simple human behaviour.

Dealing with deadlines and an election

As usual, the date of an election and our deadline conspired to make for a difficult day.
We are a thrice-weekly newspaper, publishing Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
The deadlines for those editions are horrible, but out of our control.
Deadline for Wednesday is Tuesday at 11 a.m.; deadline for Friday is Thursday at 11 a.m.; deadline for Sunday is end of day Friday.
This is because our paper is printed in Vernon - an hour and a bit away - then trucked back to Kamloops to be delivered to 30,000 homes.
And so the dilemma we face each time there is an election.
Of course, we have a fantastic website (kamloopsthisweek.com) to which we post breaking news, photos and video all day and all night.
But I am focusing our our newspaper here, the print version.
This year's provincial election fell on a Tuesday, which meant we could not have results in Wednesday's paper, considering we went to press while the polls were still open for ninr more hours.
What to do. What to do.
We hit the same challenge in last fall's federal election and we confront the same problem every three years, when municipal elections are held on a Saturday in November.
This is a longwinded way to explain why our day-after-election paper featured Kevin Krueger on the cover, casting his ballot.
Since we cannot have results of the election in our paper (though we did manage to have updated results on our webiste, along with quotes from candidates, in real time on election night), we decided again to at least include an election-themed component for the cover.
I chose Krueger because, quite frankly, I felt he was the surest bet to win a seat.
This time, we were correct; Krueger romped to victory in Kamloops-South Thompson and it was good to see we put a victor on the cover.
We weren't so lucky back in the fall, when I decided to get a shot of NDP candidate Michael Crawford casting a ballot and toss it on the front page of the day-after-election paper.
Again, I felt he was going to win.
Of course, he didn't. Conservative Cathy McLeod triumphed.
So, we are 1-1 in post-election cover shots taken before the polls close.
Yes, it is this tough planning when you are a thrice-weekly competing with a daily newspaper, local TV News and five radio stations.