Taking one for the team

By Ivan Morgan

Nobs have always ticked me off.
It’s traditional for provincial political parties to run a full slate of candidates – one in every district. It can be a struggle for some parties to find someone for each one. Some of them resort to running what is known in the business as nobs (names on ballots). That’s all they are – people who offer their name. Nobs often don’t live in the district where they are running. They often don’t campaign in that district. They usually assume they have no hope of winning. They offer their services to their party as a way of, for want of a more accurate description, keeping up appearances.
That ticks me off.
I don’t think it’s honest, or realistic, and I don’t think it fools anyone. I don’t know why it’s still done. There are nobs in this election, and that’s only the ones I can spot.
I have been asked numerous times to offer my name as a nob, and I have always declined.
The official line parties use is nobs offer people in that district a chance to vote for the party they support. That’s the political nicety.
I think it’s hogwash. Nobs enable parties to avoid telling the truth – that they can’t offer a candidate in a district because they can’t find a local to run there. So why not just say so?
Before you sneer, people as a rule don’t apply for jobs they aren’t likely to get. And the job interview process for an MHA is pretty brutal; Knocking on doors day after day in every kind of weather while spending a great deal of money. Who’d want to go through that if they had no hope? I am told owning a sailboat in Newfoundland is like standing in a cold shower tearing up $100 bills. If that’s accurate then campaigning is like walking down the street doing the same thing.
I am not singling out any party – they all do it at one time or another. The only ones without nobs this time out are the Liberals. They have the opposite problem. As the party most likely to form government they have a lot of folks hoping to belly up to the golden trough. That job interview is worth it if there’s a chance you might get it.
Sometimes, very rarely, a nob gets elected. Bonnie Hickey comes to mind. In 1993 she was the federal Liberal candidate in St. John’s East and was uncontested in her nomination because no one else thought they had a snowball’s chance against the PC Minster of Fisheries Ross Reid. To the surprise of everybody, including herself, she won. A friend told me she was so freaked out on election night they had to coax her out of a back room where she had locked herself away. Winning was not in her plans. Her plans changed.
Fun as these stories are, they are the very rare exceptions. Most nobs don’t do well, and like Ms. Hickey, never planned to. Most do it as a favour for the party they support.
That may be but it is no favour to you and I, the voters. It’s deceitful, if not dishonest. To me the party in question is saying we can’t raise enough interest in your district to generate a credible candidate but vote for us anyway. The hope is nobs will cover up serious flaws in a political organization. I think it’s a pointless exercise. I don’t think many are fooled.
Maybe something better will come along.
For example we have a candidate running in two districts because the Elections Act doesn’t expressly forbid it. Maybe that’s the solution. Why find fake candidates to fill the holes in your campaign when instead of nobs you run the one candidate in all 40 districts!
Finally, something interesting in this election.
Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com