The past couple of days has been a roller coaster of emotions - disappointment, relief, loss, excitement about new possibilities. I really did want to serve on council for the next three years, but it would have come at a cost. I never played it too safe on council, and I wear my passions on my sleeve. And lots of opportunities starting to open up now.
One of things I want to do is to analyze why I did not get re-elected. This will be a project that will take its time, and a lot of stuff will be best guesses. I will try to share some of this thinking here, among other things.
My initial thoughts:
I made some errors over the past year - the social planning fiasco and the blog controversy with John O'Fee - that resulted in a huge amount of unfavourable media coverage.
I also think I took some risks during the campaign, spent a lot of time at TRU trying to encourage young people to vote, but I think that I did not find successful ways of getting more young people out to vote. I am proud of doing that, just need to be more successful next time.
