On the campaign trail with Mark Furey in Bridgewater

(Bridgewater, NS) Last night I made a quick trip down to Bridgewater to help Liberal Mark Furey and his team with the logistics of their reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’. Mark is practically adored in the office in Halifax and now I understand why.

 His campaign office is just over the bridge on King Street, and even after supper on a Tuesday it was still buzzing with activity. As everyone knows I’m a big free internet and good discussion guy. I pitched reddit to the team because I believe it’s one of the few places online that provides the potential for substantive discussion.

 I believe Nova Scotians of all political stripes deserve the opportunity to directly ask questions of their candidates. Reddit AMAs provide the opportunity to bypass the soundbites, enabling real conversation between people and politicians.

 I walked into his campaign office to find three volunteers who were thrilled to see people they knew from their riding registering on reddit to ask their question.

 Mark researched and worked hard on every answer. With each new question he would dive back into the massive amount of documents he has about The Liberal platform with one goal in mind: give people the answer they want, the real one.

 Naturally, there were some softballs and hardballs thrown. But what really struck me is neither really mattered to him. The most important thing to Mark was providing the answers.

 Before researching he’d stop for a moment to think about why the question was being asked, then dive into his documents so he could provide the most detailed answer possible.

 Towards the end of the evening I noticed an engraved quote on the back of his computer:

 “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

 I think that says it all.