This week, I received an email inviting graduates of the South East Local Leaders Program to get back together. The organisers want to hear what has stayed with us from the program, what we’re passionate about now, and what we could achieve together that would be hard to achieve alone. Years after the program finished, someone still wants to know what we learned.
I wish people who stood for election got an email like that.
Think about the last time you were injured or seriously ill. In the first few days, people rang, dropped off meals and sent messages. Then life moved on for everyone else and the phone went quiet. You were at home on your own, lying awake wondering whether you’d get better, and whether you’d ever do the things you love again. It’s easy to slide down a deep, dark hole in that silence, and some days you need someone to lower a ladder to help you climb back out.
Candidates from every party who miss out on election night go through the same thing. I’ve stood on polling booths and seen how hard candidates work.
Putting your hand up to represent your community takes courage. Candidates put their families, their jobs and their health on the line, and recent events have shown us all that standing for public office can be dangerous. During the campaign, people surround them. Volunteers hand out how-to-vote cards from opening to close and stand by the roadside waving signs at passing cars. On election night, the room is full of people who believe in them.
The next morning, the candidate wakes up to a quiet house. Their supporters have gone back to their lives. The candidate lies awake going over every decision. Should they have doorknocked more? Said something different at that forum? Let their family down?
Through all of it, they are grateful to everyone who believed in them. They know what their volunteers gave up to stand beside them, from weekends and annual leave to time with their families. They know how many people gave money, from small donations to the funders who backed the campaign from the start. They know how much training they were given, and how hard their campaign team worked.
The candidate and every person who helped them now know things about campaigning that nobody knew before the campaign began. And the candidate wonders who is collecting that knowledge.
I’ve seen this in community groups, schools and councils. A big project finishes, someone writes a report, and the report goes into a filing cabinet. A few years later, a new consultant is brought in to do the same work again, and everyone learns the same lessons the hard way. The people who did the work the first time are still there, waiting to be asked.
The Local Leaders organisers asked. The rest of us can too.
Put yourself in the candidate’s place. In the weeks after election night, you might want a phone call, a cup of tea at the kitchen table, or someone who wants to hear your story and learn from it.
If you know someone who stood and missed out, be the person who lowers the ladder. Ring them this week. Ask how they’re going and what they learned, then listen.
They turned up for their community. We can turn up for them.