Candidates Who Won’t Answer Questions Are Telling Voters Something

Election campaigns are carefully managed exercises. Websites are polished. Media releases are vetted. Social media posts are edited and scheduled. Speeches are rehearsed. Every word can be tested, refined and delivered in an environment where the candidate controls the message. But democracy is not supposed to be a controlled environment.

The real test of a candidate is not what they say when they choose the question, write the script and control the microphone. It is what they do when someone else asks a fair question and expects an answer. Increasingly, some candidates appear unwilling to take that test.

They will issue statements. They will direct voters to their websites. They will deliver speeches. They will post videos and campaign material. Yet when legitimate questions arrive from independent media, they go silent.

That is not communications strategy. It is political cowardice.

Candidates asking Hamiltonians for the authority to make decisions about hundreds of millions of public dollars, taxation, housing, policing, development and the future direction of this city should have enough confidence in their own convictions to answer reasonable questions.

A candidate who communicates only when the conditions are controlled is not necessarily demonstrating discipline. They may be demonstrating calculation: determining which questions are politically advantageous, which audiences are useful and which answers carry the least electoral risk. That is campaigning by calculation rather than candour. Is that who we want in government?

An unpopular position honestly defended tells voters more about a candidate than a dozen carefully crafted slogans. Candidates should also understand something else: refusing to answer is itself an answer.

It tells voters how a candidate may behave once elected. If someone will not engage with independent questions while actively seeking your vote, when they are theoretically at their most accessible, what reason is there to believe they will become more accountable once they have secured four years in office?

At The Hamiltonian, we encounter candidates who truly step up—candidates who are unafraid to state their views and who appreciate the opportunity to answer fair questions openly and unfettered.

But we have also encountered the other extreme. Sometimes, after a deadline has passed, we are told that email problems were experienced and are asked whether answers can still be submitted. Sometimes, we receive polished statements from campaigns explaining why the timing of our questions is simply not right and they will respond once a certain campaign milestone date is reached. We have even been told that we ought to group our questions together so as not to have a greater chance of receiving an answer.

Each explanation may sound reasonable in isolation. But taken together, they can reveal a troubling approach to public accountability: engagement on the candidate’s terms, according to the candidate’s timing, and preferably within circumstances the campaign can control.

Candidates are, of course, busy. Campaigns are demanding. But seeking public office necessarily means being asked questions—sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes inconveniently and sometimes about issues a campaign would rather not discuss.

That is not an imposition. It is part of the job they are asking voters to give them.

Hamilton voters should therefore look beyond the campaign machinery.

Look beyond the professionally written biographies. Look beyond the slogans, endorsements, staged announcements and carefully controlled social media feeds.

• Ask who is willing to answer questions they did not write. 
• Ask who is prepared to defend a position without knowing in advance whether it will be popular.
• Ask who engages when there is no guarantee of favourable coverage.

And pay particular attention to those who repeatedly choose silence.

Sometimes, the questions a candidate refuses to answer tell voters more than anything written on their campaign website.

It is difficult to understand how a candidate can ask for your trust—to serve as your Mayor, Ward Councillor or School Board Trustee—while playing it safe when it comes to earning that trust.

Cal DiFalco, Publisher 

The Hamiltonian