Tuesday, November 27, 2007

I hope Mr. Duguay didn't take my advice to literally

(crossposted to CanadaEast)

Six weeks ago Roger Duguay was elected leader of the New Brunswick NDP. I gave him some counsel that suggested he should pick his battles so that he might come to "own" certain issues and build political capital that way to ensure the NDP remained (or re-became depending on your point of view) a player. Since then, I don't think he has been heard from.

The NDP website was only just updated to reflect he is the leader. He has not sent out a news release according to both the NDP site and his personal site. To my knowledge, he has not sat down with the editorial boards of any of the province's papers to get some substantive coverage.

And here is the icing on the cake. He was not mentioned in any of today's newspaper coverage on the Throne Speech. Ordinarily, one would expect the NDP to complain that the print media is biased against them and one might even be compelled to believe that they were overlooked. But, according to the Daily Gleaner, he was not quoted becuase "NDP Leader Roger Duguay couldn't be reached for comment Monday."

I hope that this was not because of my advice. There are four days a year that a politician in Mr. Duguay's position should be waiting by the phone and actively pursuing the press above all else: the day before and the day of the Throne Speech and the day before and the day of the budget.

If the NDP is ever to become viable again, Mr. Duguay must ensure he never misses these sorts of opportunities again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well Mr. Duguay was at the throne speech and even took questions afterward if those slackers over at the gleaner would have taken the time to ask him questions maybe they would have something to print I was there and I noticed that Margret Ann Blaney even made sure that he got a seat on the floor maybe Roxanne forgot to include him, shame!

nbpolitico said...

It was good that he was at the Throne Speech and speaking to the press; it is too bad he wasn't available when they were doing their pre-speech stories however, which was the point.