How Olivia Chow's organizing prowess helped propel her into the mayor's office

Sabrina Bowman, a volunteer on the Olivia Chow mayoral campaign, had only just returned to the office after a day of putting up signs, when an appreciative team member asked if he could schedule her in for another day of sign drop-offs.

Bowman, an experienced organizer, hadn't planned to commit a lot to this campaign. But she found herself agreeing to take on more canvassing shifts and an election day shift after that. 

"Organizing is not easy," Bowman said. "It's much easier to make a petition or to tweet. Organizing is hard work."

The unglamourous work of political organizing isn't something that gets a lot of attention during election campaigns. But those who worked on her campaign say Chow's efforts — which included adapted strategies learned from a Harvard University professor who helped Barack Obama become president — were a big part of her win over former councillor Ana Bailão, who had more city councillor endorsements and was the preferred pick of former mayor John Tory.

As the campaign wrote in an email to supporters days before election day: "The campaign with the most effective get-out-the-vote strategy is going to win."

In a byelection on the heels of a fall municipal election that saw historically lower voter turnout, getting people engaged enough to vote, speak to their neighbours and, most importantly, have them turn out to the polls took organizing technique. 

Bowman said this campaign was "a tangible example of organizing … I saw it on almost every level. It was actually incredible."

The type of organizing Chow's team used was rooted in the work of Harvard professor Marshall Ganz, a key training and organizing strategist for Obama's 2008 campaign. It's based on relationship-building, emphasizing storytelling and keeping volunteers engaged. 

Chow and a handful of Canadians, including Bowman, took Ganz's course close to a decade ago. Adapting this curriculum, Chow founded the Institute for Change Leaders (ICL) in 2016 at Toronto Metropolitan University. (The author of this article took an earlier version of one of the courses at Toronto Metropolitan University.) 

Keeping volunteers plugged in

Bowman's experience of being quickly offered a new task was not an anomaly. Building strong personal relationships and matching volunteers' skills and interests well is what helped the Obama campaign retain 80 percent of volunteers between his first campaign and his second campaign, said Amrit Parhar, the acting director of the ICL. 

Chow's 2023 deputy campaign director Nadine Tkatchevskaia said the campaign was "a tremendous win for organizing". 

Volunteer retention over the course of the campaign was high, she added.

"We routinely ran out of canvas sheets, ran out of pens, clipboards, because everybody would show up," said Tkatchevskaia, a veteran who has worked on campaigns ranging from Bernie Sanders' primary run to Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath's campaign.

Chow's campaign mobilized more than 2,500 volunteers on election day and thousands throughout the campaign, she said.

Bowman said Ganz' method emphasizes "snowflake model organizing" or "engagement organizing" to keep volunteers plugged in.

In the centre of the snowflake is the main organizer, who is surrounded by a handful of people who are "key leads." Then a ball of people are positioned around each person, and a further ball of people around them, she said.

She said people might come in to do one task, are encouraged, and then moved to another.

"The idea is you move up this ladder of engagement … as people start to demonstrate leadership you move them into leadership positions," she said. 

The importance of less exciting tasks are also explained so people derive meaning from their work, she said.

Building the next generation of organizers

Bowman said multiple facilitators and students went on to help on Chow's campaign in some form. Some who spoke to CBC Toronto said it was about the strong personal relationships already built with Chow.

Amanda Harvey-Sánchez, a former student of Chow's, is now a facilitator at the ICL and was a canvassing lead on her campaign. 

Harvey-Sánchez said saying Chow has been out of politics for years — she hadn't served in a political office since resigning as an MP in 2014 — reflected too narrow a definition of what that means.

"She's been doing the mentoring work," Harvey-Sánchez said. "She's been building up the next generation. She's been in the grassroots, in the trenches." 

Harvey-Sánchez said Chow's use of storytelling was a familiar Ganz technique. Chow often told her own story, including struggles she and her family experienced as newcomers.

The organizing method also teaches people to think about how their story intersects with others, she said.

"It's hard to connect with someone at the door about an election. But then you talk to them on a human level and hear their stories connect to your story [and then] connect to Olivia's story," she said.

Tkatchevskaia, the deputy campaign director, said the campaign was able to take storytelling to the next level by sharing the stories of volunteers with the public, like Dahlia, a young person struggling with affordability.

Organizing techniques used across political spectrum

Karim Bardeesy, a Liberal candidate in the 2022 provincial election, has also used Ganz' technique on the campaign trail and in the classroom.

He said it is being used effectively by candidates across the political spectrum, but because the technique is relational it can take time to make it work well, making it tricky to use in a snap election.

But Chow had a head start.

"There was an organizing advantage because, while they didn't have a turn-key campaign ready to go, they had more elements of that because they had more knowledge of the practice of it. They had networks of people that were already doing it," said Bardeesy, who is also the executive director of the Dais, a public policy leadership institute at Toronto Metropolitan University.

The Chow campaign had organizers involved from ICL, the NDP, social justice groups or unions who had familiarity with the methods, he said.

When asked about the role organizing played in her win, Chow said there is power in building relationships. 

"Organizing is bringing people together, building strong relationships with each other, looking at what we have in common. And that strong relationship is really what power is all about," she said.