The Campaign for Attention

How Richmond Hill Candidates Are Reaching Voters

Three Richmond Hill candidates describe the door knocking, digital campaigning, signs and simple persistence it takes to get noticed in a municipal election.

By City Desk

Running for municipal council presents candidates with an unusual problem: before they can persuade voters to support them, they often have to persuade voters simply to notice them.

Unlike federal and provincial elections, where political parties provide candidates with an established brand, organization and a rough shorthand for what they stand for, municipal candidates largely have to build recognition around their own names. Ontario does allow like-minded municipal candidates to campaign together or identify as a slate, but each candidate still runs a separate campaign and must keep their campaign finances separate.

So how do you get thousands of people to recognize your name before voting day?

Strong Richmond Hill asked several Richmond Hill candidates how they are approaching that challenge. Their responses point to a campaign that is taking place simultaneously at front doors, on social media, through websites and flyers, and soon, on election signs.

The front door is still hard to beat

Ward 5 candidate Marty Paulin has a straightforward answer: knock on doors.

“Door to door campaigning seems to be best,” Paulin told STRH. He says he has already reached approximately 3,000 doors.

But what he is encountering at those doors reveals another problem facing municipal candidates: some residents are barely aware there is an election at all.

Paulin says he has met voters who ask which political party he represents, along with others who express broader distrust of politicians and say they do not bother voting.

For a candidate, then, canvassing is doing several jobs at once. It introduces the candidate, provides an opportunity to talk about local issues and, sometimes, begins with the even more basic task of reminding someone that a municipal election is happening.

Ward 2 candidate Sigmund Lee has also made door-to-door canvassing the centre of his campaign. He says he began in May and has personally visited neighbourhoods throughout the ward.

But Lee says the value of canvassing goes beyond asking for a vote.

For him, the doorstep is where a candidate can listen to residents, learn what concerns them and explain a position directly. At the same time, he recognizes that not everyone wants someone knocking.

Residents may be working from home, putting children to sleep, resting, or simply prefer not to answer the door. His answer is the old-fashioned campaign flyer.

If nobody answers, Lee leaves information behind so residents can decide later whether they want to visit his website, email him or call.

It is a decidedly multi-channel approach.

“Door-to-door canvassing creates genuine two-way conversations,” Lee said. Flyers provide information without requiring someone to answer the door, while a website gives a candidate room to explain positions in greater detail.

Campaigning in the digital era

Ward 6 candidate Hasti Anasory also lists door knocking among her main methods of reaching voters, but puts greater emphasis on another arena: social media.

“I believe the era is the digital era,” Anasory told STRH.

Her campaign has made extensive use of short social videos, putting the candidate herself in front of the camera rather than relying solely on static campaign graphics.

But Anasory does not see digital campaigning, door knocking and election signs as entirely different things. She sees all of them as forms of presence.

“The person who is more present, people remember more,” she said, adding that the message itself remains equally important.

That may capture one of the fundamental realities of a municipal campaign. A voter cannot consider a candidate they have never heard of.

And municipal candidates often have only a few months to create the familiarity that an incumbent, business owner, community activist or other locally prominent person may have accumulated over years.

Anasory approaches that challenge from her experience as a real estate broker, where winning clients also requires repeatedly getting her name in front of prospective customers.

Asked about the biggest difficulty in gaining visibility, she offered a rather different answer from the other candidates: she does not see it as particularly challenging.

“Being competitive is my second nature,” she said.

And then there are the signs

The most visible phase of Richmond Hill’s election campaign has not actually begun yet.

For the 2026 municipal election, Richmond Hill election signs can be installed beginning September 28. Candidates who want to display election signage under the City’s system must first pay a $308 election-sign fee.

There is now another consideration for candidates who want signs along Regional roads.

York Region’s new sign bylaw took effect in January 2026. The Region charges candidates another $310 for an election-sign permit covering its system, with election signs restricted to designated Regional-road intersections and a maximum of 50 signs per candidate.

That means a candidate wanting access to both systems could spend $618 on permits before paying for the signs themselves.

“In municipal politics, visibility is not vanity. If voters never hear your name, they never get the chance to weigh your ideas.”

For Lee, that was enough to reconsider the traditional sign campaign.

He says that in the 2022 election he paid a Richmond Hill sign fee of $273. This year, rather than paying the combined $618 required to participate in both the City and Regional systems, he has decided against the conventional approach.

Instead, Lee says he is putting magnetic campaign signs on vehicles used normally and asking supporters whether they would be willing to do the same.

He describes it as both a campaign tactic and a protest against the rising cost of political visibility.

Signs, he argues, do have a role. They create name recognition and remind residents an election is underway. That can be particularly valuable for challengers competing against incumbents who have had four years to become familiar to voters.

But the question for a campaign is whether that visibility is worth the money.

What does a campaign impression actually accomplish?

The three candidates’ responses suggest that the different campaigning tools are not really interchangeable.

A lawn sign can put a name in front of thousands of passing drivers, but says little about what the candidate believes.

A social video can introduce both a face and an idea, but competes against an enormous amount of other material for a few seconds of attention.

A website can contain detailed positions, but only works once someone has enough interest to visit it.

And a doorstep conversation may reach only one household at a time, but gives voters something none of the other methods can easily provide: an immediate opportunity to question the person asking for their vote.

Ontario’s own candidate guidance makes clear just how much responsibility falls on individual campaigns. Providing voters with information about a candidacy is the candidate’s responsibility. Municipal clerks are not responsible for promoting candidates, and even all-candidates debates are optional events organized by community groups, media organizations or campaigns rather than election officials.

That leaves candidates assembling their own communications system, one door, flyer, video, website visit, sign and conversation at a time.

And perhaps the most revealing observation came from Paulin’s experience after knocking on thousands of doors.

Before municipal candidates can win the argument over who should represent Richmond Hill, some of them are still trying to get voters interested enough to have the argument at all.