By Andrew Macdonald
A sure sign as any that Liberal insider and leading strategist Dale Palmeter will actively campaign for Andy Fillmore’s bid to be Halifax mayor has to be the appearance of Fillmore at a lunch table sponsored by Crestview Strategy at the recent state-of-union address for incumbent mayor Mike Savage.
Palmeter is a senior consultant at the agency Crestview Strategy.
Crestview sponsored a lunch table, where Fillmore was invited to sit, leading to lots of chatter Palmeter will work on Fillmore’s expected campaign to become mayor of Halifax Regional Municipality.
Palmeter, now in his late 50s, is a Windsor native who worked on his first political campaign in 1988 when he helped elect the late great Buchanan Tory, Ron Russell.
He then worked on Russell’s 1993 election campaign, when the political powerhouse squeaked in by 46 votes as Liberal John Savage’s team steamrolled across Nova Scotia.
Crestview as an agency does public relations and crisis communications, lobbies governments and undertakes government relations, and assists its clients in advancing those firms’ policies.
Having worked the last 40 years for politicos, including Scott Brison, Dale Palmeter is a senior consultant with Crestview Strategy at its growing Halifax offices. Contributed
At Crestview, Palmeter says, “I can work in strategic communications, I can work in communications in general, and (social media) campaigns, and give advice to groups, organizations and businesses who want to understand better how to build a successful argument for something they are looking for.”
Work on mobilizing public opinion related to government policies which might affect the firm’s client roster, Crestview would undertake such things as social media posts and social media campaigns.
“It is issues-oriented”, adds Palmeter. “That is all part of social media campaigns and efforts to identify supporters for an issue and get them to amplify their voices and make their voices heard among decision makers,” Palmeter tells The Notebook.
Some of the firm’s clients listed on Crestview’s website include McDonalds Restaurants Canada, Barrick Gold, and Rogers. In this province, it undertakes PR duties for Nova Scotia Sand & Gravel, headquartered on the South Shore.
Crestview expanded into Nova Scotia two years ago when it gobbled up PR Hive, an agency operated by Robyn McIsaac, who is now a senior consultant at Crestview’s Halifax office, located in Ben McCrea-built Founder’s Square in Downtown Halifax.
McIsaac focuses on PR work at the firm. There are seven folk in Atlantic Canada, the bulk of them in Halifax.
“We also hired somebody in New Brunswick, John Robinson. He worked for the NDP government in British Columbia, and recently relocated back to New Brunswick,” Palmeter tells The Notebook.
Part of Palmeter’s duties at Crestview will be to drum up new clients. “I will be involved in business development,” he tells me. “We are building a presence in Atlantic Canada and I will reach into my network of people to find ways of offering support for the services we provide,” adds Palmeter.
“One of the things that interested me in Crestview is really they don’t subscribe to the old adage that we are just here to open a door for somebody. It is not about access.”
Palmeter is referring to a time when agencies – and lobby firms – would hire a Tory when the Tories were in power or Liberals when the Grits were in power.
“Crestview is very much trying to provide advice, insight and help entities build winning arguments for what they are looking for so that they can sell themselves,” he explains.
“Access is old school – my personal view is that it does not work. The issues are way more complicated. The needs are far greater, and individuals and entities need a lot of help to understand how the system works. It is complex.”
Palmeter spent 22 years as the de facto chief of staff for Annapolis Valley MP Scott Brison. Brison was first elected as a Tory MP and went on in 2003 to join the Liberals. He retired from politics in 2019.
Palmeter has worked on 12 campaigns, since 1988.
I asked him how many of those elections he helped win for politicos. His reply to The Notebook: “Most.”
In 1999 against all odds, he helped ensure former Herald editor Jane Purves was elected as a Tory in Halifax Citadel.
That riding does not favour Tories. Palmeter designed an election postcard showing an open hospital bed and a closed Sydney Steel mill. Media at the time dubbed him Postcard Palmeter.
That is when Palmeter got to know Crestview co-founder Chad Rogers because Rogers was hired as Purves’ executive assistant.
“We also worked on Joe Clark’s election for the leadership of the PC party in 1998.”
Rogers lived in Halifax from 1999 to about 2003. He became a senior advisor to Tory premier John Hamm. It was he alone who convinced Hamm to send out offshore royalty cheques of $155 to every Nova Scotian, which was to me the dumbest political move of Hamm, who otherwise ranks as a great premier.
“Chad is a very talented person. He is a natural at this business and he is a tremendous entrepreneur. He’s got a tremendous entrepreneurial talent, so he has been successful.”
Staffers at Crestview are rewarded with company shares, a smart way to retain its workforce in the marketplace. “Every employee of Crestview has a path to owning equity in the company,” adds Palmeter.
While “most” of Palmeter’s chosen candidates have won elected office, there were some notable losses — at least two, that I can count when he served as campaign manager.
Palmeter served as campaign manager for Jane Purves in 2003 when she lost to the then Liberal leader, Danny Graham.
In 2021, Palmeter was co-campaign manager of Iain Rankin’s successful Nova Scotia Liberal leadership campaign, but was unable to get Rankin elected as premier in the general election. Rankin lost the election by a narrow 7,000 votes or a vote margin loss of 1.8 per cent to the Tory Tim Houston brigade.
Liberal strategists Palmeter and Joanne Macrae took significant criticism as the co-campaign managers for Liberal leader Rankin’s election loss. Rankin had called the vote for Aug. 17 in a period when he had a 12-point lead, although in June 3 his lead was 28 points.
But, in 2021 there was also political redemption for Palmeter and Macrae because they were organizers for the Liberal campaigns of Halifax’s Andy Fillmore and Kings-Hants Kody Blois.
Fillmore won the 2021 election in Halifax with a 1,300 vote lead in a race pundits forecast as being tight. The week before the vote, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned twice in Halifax.
When Fillmore went back to Ottawa for a third term, Macrae resumed her role in a senior spot with the MP.
Palmeter not only organized with the Fillmore campaign, he also organized the campaign for Kody Blois, who won by a large commanding 3,000 vote lead in Kings Hants, the former riding of Scott Brison.
Now, following the 2021 federal vote, Palmeter and Macrae are back on the winning side as Liberal electioneering strategists. That has got to feel pretty good.”.
As his campaign manager, Palmeter ensured Scott Brison, his longtime friend, won elections from 1997 to 2015.
Palmeter was once considered the most powerful man in Nova Scotia Liberal governing circles here in Halifax and Ottawa.
Former Ottawa political journalist, Jane Taber told me once “Dale is our secret weapon” when he joined Rankin’s premier’s office.
Taber was one of the best politico scribes Ottawa has ever seen. Her unique storytelling talents, her tough questions of governments from Brian Mulroney to Stephen Harper, made her a must-read, across the nation. Just like a CNN journalist, Taber created her own unique journalism brand, going on TV talk shows.
So when she stated Palmeter is Rankin’s “secret weapon, I pay attention.
Former Globe & Mail journalist Jane Taber with former Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney. Notebook file photo
Palmeter is the main reason why for seven elections from 1997 to 2015, that his friend from childhood Scott Brison got elected, slaying his opponents.
And, when he was with Brison, patronage plums from the Trudeau government, from 2015 onward, no federal appointment was made, without Palmeter’s green light.
Some of the Palmeter appointments have largely been above political service to the Liberals.
Take a look at senators, Palmeter “called” an Indigenous leader to the Red Chamber, and even called a renowned shrink to Ottawa as a Nova Scotia senator.
On the Port of Halifax, most of his appointments have been on merit, although, one, David Cameron, rewarded Cameron’s unsuccessful run for Liberal MLA office.
Cameron is a senior lawyer with Burchell’s – and since I always made news ink hay on the Harper port board appointments giving donations to Tory contenders, I should note Cameron has made campaign donations to Iain Rankin and Randy Delorey, during their leadership bids.
One port appointment has a direct connection with Palmeter. Port director Deanna Furlotte, appointed by the Trudeau Transport Minister, in fact, is a close chum to Palmeter, a regular guest at his restaurant outings.
Palmeter began his political life in the late 1980s as a Tory toiling in the Buchanan regime where he learned the art of politics serving Ron Russell, one of the most successful politicos Nova Scotia ever produced. For a student of politics, the Honest It’s John Buchanan regime remains a classic textbook case on how to win at the polls. From 1978 to 1988, Buchanan won four back-to-back terms.
Palmeter is a product of the Buchanan government and is intimately familiar with all of the winning ways of Buchanan.
Scott Brison, in a Notebook chat last spring, praised Palmeter’s political skill set.
“Dale is a remarkable strategist,” Brison said.
Dale Palmeter in this file photo chats with Jim Irving at the Halifax Shipyard, where construction on the fourth Arctic Patrol vessel was underway. The Notebook photo
Top Tory fundraiser David Henderson speaking to The Notebook after the provincial Liberal leadership race in 2021, reckoned Iain Rankin was going to win the Nova Scotia Liberal leadership, crediting Rankin’s leadership co-campaign manager, Dale Palmeter.
Palmeter has served a lifetime in politics, first as an aide to John Buchanan’s the man who best knew how to win elections: the one and only Ron Russell. Then in 1997, Palmeter went to work on ensuring unknown contender Scott Brison could win the Tory ticket in Kings Hants.
Palmeter would later become a Liberal when Brison moved from the Progressive Conservative party to Paul Martin’s Liberal team.
Palmeter is the man in my books who has single-handedly ensured Brison won seven elections, first as a Tory and then as a Liberal.
Dale Palmeter, left, with a former political boss Scott Brison. The Notebook photo
When the Liberal leadership job opened in 2021 with the retirement of Premier Stephen McNeil, there had been serious phone calls made by Palmeter to gauge interest in a Brison bid as the next Liberal premier of Nova Scotia.
Palmeter’s candidates rarely lose elections, where he is the chief strategist to get the vote out. Palmeter is the modern-day Keith Davey, who ensured Pierre Trudeau won elections as prime minister in the 1970s and 1980s.
Palmeter, a product of Valley New England Planters, is a veritable political strategist. He knows how to be on the winning side of elections. Whether it has been hiring Acadia University students to protest Harper minister forays into the Annapolis Valley, whether it is studying and reading voter data patterns to get the right vote out, and whether it is spinning journalists across the nation, Palmeter is an astute student of politics.
I still marvel at how Scott Brison came on the political radar in 1997. Then working in New York, Brison was not the favoured contender to run for the Tories in Kings Hants.
Dale Palmeter has ensured his candidates win elections. He oversaw Scott Brison’s seven election wins, and in 1999 Palmeter saw to it that an unknown political entity by the name of Jane Purves won in Halifax Citadel. The Notebook photo
It was Palmeter who was in 1997 signed up card-carrying Tories to back his own candidacy for the PC nomination. After the time period elapsed for contenders to enter the race, Palmeter stepped aside and said he had decided not to mount a run for the party’s nod.
At precisely that moment, Brison then threw his name into the ring — secure and sound with the hundreds and hundreds of card-carrying members signed up by his long-time childhood friend, Palmeter. The rest is history and Brison went on to win the 1997 outing.
When Peter MacKay merged the federal PC party with the right-wing Canadian Alliance, Brison and Palmeter felt their values had disappeared in the new Conservative Party.
Brison is quick to note he did not become a political turncoat when he crossed the floor and joined the Liberal government led by Paul Martin. He contends, as has former Prime Minister Joe Clark, that the PC party simply disappeared.
But the move created a big question for Brison and Palmeter: Could he win as a Liberal candidate in the Tory stronghold of the Annapolis Valley? That’s when Palmeter ordered a round-up of gatherings of voters to canvass this question of a Liberal Brison winning re-election.
When Brison went to the Liberals, I thought that Palmeter would eventually become a senator. That plum has eluded Palmeter because Justin Trudeau has decided partisans can’t become senators on the Liberal side of the Red Chamber.
But when Brison joined the Trudeau government cabinet, Palmeter’s power grew tremendously; every single government appointment in Nova Scotia was first vetted by Palmeter.
Palmeter’s candidates tend to win office, even against all the odds.
Let’s look at 2015 when Andy Fillmore had a decisive win over Jhoanna Miners to earn the Halifax federal nod for the Liberals. Fillmore, then a bureaucrat with provincial Crown agency Waterfront Development Corp, took 327 votes to Miners 101 votes. During that 2015 battle, Palmeter was serving as Fillmore’s key aide.
In 2015, I wrote, “It’s been said Fillmore coasted to an easy victory in large part because of the diligent work of his chief strategist Dale Palmeter.”
While Fillmore had the backing of the party establishment, top among them Dale Godsoe, it could have been Miners for the taking had she actively canvassed card selling among the 10,000 navy crew in Halifax, where her husband Phil toils. That’s a tight-knit group, if ever there was one.
Palmeter has an uncanny ability to read how an issue will resonate with the electorate. He devours political reading material and studies hard-fought races in the United States, where electioneering is practiced to an art.
Dale Palmeter is now a government lobbyist and a former 22-year long top political aide to Scott Brison. Notebook file photo
Palmeter’s candidates rarely lose, he has the political Midas touch. He is a cross between George H.W. Bush strategist Lee Atwater, who took no hostages implementing winning campaign tactics, and as I said above he embodies Pierre Trudeau strategist Keith Davey, who won back-to-back elections for the senior Trudeau.
I photo-shopped this newspaper headline, which had referenced Margaret Thatcher after one of her three election wins as UK prime minister, and added Palmeter’s image.
