#9 Vanity and Learning
The Mentors (Part III - Lowell Murray, Bill Neville and Nancy MacLean)
This is the last in a three-part series on the men and women who mentored and taught me pretty much everything I know.
Let me introduce you to the last three of these remarkable people.
Lowell Murray – While others may have taught me more or imparted more specific skills, no one opened more doors to opportunity for me than Lowell Murray.
Joe Clark appointed Lowell his National Campaign Chairman shortly after he assumed the Leadership of the PC Party.
While Murray was well-known and respected across the organization, he wasn’t an “insider” like most of the other noted operatives in the Party. Where others were largely the hard-drinking-constant- smoking, hail-fellow-well-met types, he was soft spoken, very refined and intellectual, and constantly wearing a suit and tie with hair meticulously combed and shoes scrupulously shined. Like my first full-time boss, Michael Meighen, he was also a bachelor when I first met him.
The son of a Cape Breton coal miner, he had served as then federal leader Robert Stanfield’s Chief-of-Staff but then retreated back to his native Atlantic Canada to assume a similar role with New Brunswick Premier, Richard Hatfield.
My first encounter with him was briefing him on the nation-wide poll I had conducted during the recently held Leadership race.
While it wasn’t cleat to me whether Lowell was particularly familiar with polling (as I noted it was still in the early days of the discipline) but based on the questions he asked and the observations he made, it was obvious that he understood not just the survey findings but also the implications for the job that he had been tasked to do. He also wanted to make sure that all the other members of the team he was putting together were not just briefed on survey results going forward, but that they understood that this campaign was going to be “poll driven” and that their decisions would have to be supported by survey results.
So whenever he made a appointment, he called on me to brief the new recruit and after I did this a few times, he asked me if I could preform this task permanently as the party’s National Campaign Secretary.
This was a relatively new position and role within Canadian campaign committee structure. Other than running the polling program, I had no operational responsibilities or staff. Instead, I was to work directly with other campaign directors and to brief them on the results and then work with them to interpret what they meant in terms of the strategies we would develop for the leader’s tour, policy and the platform, speeches, regional organization and communications and advertising.
What made this assignment so unique and meaningful for my future career development was that it meant that I had to become an expert not just in polling but all the other disciplines of touring, developing policy and platforms, writing speeches, regional organization and communications and advertising. What happened was that I was developing skills that went beyond my academic training of doing polling, and was learning how to use polling.
After we won the 1979 election, Clark appointed Murray to the Senate where he later went on to serve in Brian Mulroney’s Cabinet.
We did the 1980 federal election together but after that, he took on a more advisory role in future campaigns (right up to 1993) and concentrated more on public policy and his Senatorial duties.
He married a lovely women from Cape Breton and had a son who later worked with me at Harris Decima in the mid-2000s.
We have lost touch in recent years but still exchange emails from time-to-time and I remain forever grateful for the confidence he placed in me.
Learning – Open doors for others and it may open new ones for you.
Bill Neville – While I considered all of my mentors my betters, none of them more so than Bill Neville.
He was a former journalist, who had entered politics as a Liberal political staffer, started one of the first lobbying firms in Canada and ran against John Turner as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the1974 federal election.
I met him because, as a PhD student and new father, I was in desperate need of a job and my Canadian history advisor provided an introduction to Bill in his new capacity as the Executive Director of Opposition Research. (More on this in a later series)
After what should have been a disastrous job interview, he hired me as his new, part-time Social Policy Analyst.
Opposition Research was a bureau funded by the Library of Parliament to provide policy advice to the Official Opposition, which at the time happened to be the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, under Robert L Stanfield. The office was staffed by a coterie of smart young things, each of whom had their own area of policy expertise and specialization.
Every Monday morning all of us would line up outside of Neville’s office, and one-by-one he would have us come in to give us head-spinning instructions on our week’s assignment that included which legislation to read, who we should call and what we should discuss with them, and what biases the Members of Parliament we were going to work with would bring to each file.
All of us left these sessions thinking the same thing .. “Holy Shit, This guys not only can do my job better than me, he can do the job of every person who works here, better than all of us combined!”
Without question, he had the finest policy mind of anyone I had ever encountered – then and since.
He was the one who gave me license to run the in-house polling program and as soon as Joe Clark was elected Leader he appointed Bill his Chief of Staff.
Between their two massive brains, he and Lowell Murray become fast friends and a formidable team that ran the PC Party for the next 4 years.
After Clark was defeated in 1980, Bill left the Hill, moved to Toronto and became the Principal Assistant to the CEO of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
While I’ve already noted that my relations with my mentors almost all evolved from acolyte to friend, none was more so than with Neville. We went on family holidays together in the Bahamas, numerous golf holidays in Scotland and throughout the states and included one another in birthday and festive occasions.
In whatever job he occupied, if he needed any polling, I was his pollster.
I was finally able to reciprocate when we asked Bill to join us and come to work at the Public Affairs Group of Companies in 1985. (More on this in a later series). Between his unparalleled understanding of public policy and the workings of government, and his deep relations with Prime Minister Mulroney and his cabinet, Neville’s contribution to the business was enormous and soon he, my partner, David McNaughton and I were on the cover of Report on Business Magazine. So immense was his contribution that it soon become evident to all that his status as an “employee” was not sustainable and after four years, we left on good terms as he started his own business.
Our personal relationship never skipped a beat.
When he died, I spoke at his funeral …. And cried at the podium.
Learning – Sometimes you get lucky
Nancy McLean – If Bill was among my best friends, Nancy McLean was my best friend.
While most of my mentors were at least a decade older than me, Nancy was only a couple of years. But even if she was more of a “peer” than the others, no one taught, protected or cared about me more than her.
I met her at a PC fundraiser dinner and we hit it off immediately. After whispering ridicule and making fun of virtually everyone else in the room, we both agreed we were bored out of our minds and went outside to have a smoke. We never went back inside and instead went to a bar and talked until it closed.
She was hilariously funny, outrageously irreverent and incredibly articulate.
She had started her career as a talent recruiter for game show television and (like me) fallen into politics quite fortuitously, working with Tom Scott on the Big Blue Machine’s advertising campaigns in 1975 and 1977 as one of his producers.
Because of the rift between the Ontario and federal parties at the time, it struck me that she might be sufficiently under the radar to be recruited to work with me and Lowell on the upcoming 1979 national election.
And so it began. I would do the research. Based on our findings, we would brainstorm creative possibilities, test these in focus groups and produce spots for airing…. Pissing our pants with laughter, the whole time.
After the 1979 federal election, we were inseparable and did campaigns together in BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and three more national elections. If you wanted me on your campaign, you got Nancy and if you wanted Nancy, you got me. There was never any negotiation.
In addition to being my most valued professional colleague, she was also my closest confident, She advised me on who to get close to and who to stay away from, praised me when I did something smart and quietly took me aside and coached me how to avoid future mistakes when I did something stupid. She even forced me to go shopping and would pick out my cloths for me because (as she told me before giving me a hug) “you look like a sack of potatoes”. She was the best big sister I ever could have asked for.
In 1992 she was diagnosed with breast cancer – only months before my wife was given the same diagnosis. Both had mastectomies and underwent chemotherapy treatment and both went into remission but, in Nancy’s case, only to die from a sudden and massive heart attack within the year.
At a memorial we held for her at the Albany Club, Norman Atkins (not normally known for his eloquence) might have said it best …. “For those of us who knew her it is inconceivable that, in the end, what let Nancy down would be her heart”. Amen.
Learning - Sigh…I miss her so much