WA election: campaign king Patrick Gorman learnt politics from Kevin Rudd

The mastermind of Labor’s win in WA is Patrick Gorman, who learned politics in the Canberra office of Kevin Rudd.

Blueprint for success: the mastermind of Labor’s win in Western Australia, Patrick Gorman, learnt the art of politics in the office of Kevin Rudd. Picture: Colin Murty

The West Australian Labor Party’s disciplined campaign, including a Community Action Network that mobilised hundreds of volunteers who were not even party members, may become a blueprint for other states and even the next federal election.

The mastermind of Labor’s rollicking win in Western Australia on Saturday is Patrick Gorman, a 32-year-old with an MBA who grew up in the Labor stronghold of Fremantle and learnt the art of politics in the Canberra office of Kevin Rudd when he was prime minister and foreign minister.

WA Labor needed to win an extra 10 seats on Saturday, a daunting task despite the unpopularity of the Barnett government. It has won an extra 20, giving it 40 out of 59 lower house seats.

The Liberals have been reduced to a jury.

Mr Gorman took over as state secretary in 2015 when state Labor was still haunted by its drubbing two years earlier.

The party preselected its candidates carefully and early, and made the unusual decision of releasing almost all policies well ahead of the election campaign.

The state’s Labor leader, Mark McGowan, announced his jobs policy a year before the election.

The message to voters was consistent for 12 months, and centred on the slogan “A fresh approach”.

“I think we did a very good job in our layered communication — what we were talking about on our ads was the same as what our candidates were talking about, which was the same as what was going into people’s letterboxes,” Mr Gorman said yesterday.

“The absolute lack of that (consistency) on the Liberal side — from any sides including Greens and One Nation — was really ­surprising.”

Mr Gorman said he ran a very modern campaign using data to target audiences. Realising some voters’ only screen time was with a phone, the team created advertisements calculated to look as good on TV as on a device.

For its puppy farming announcement, he exploited simple Facebook tools so ads reached voters interested in animal welfare.

Mr Gorman credits his deputy Lenda Oshalem with “turbo charging” a Community Action Network with people who had not joined the party. Extraordinarily, 63 per cent of Labor’s volunteers during this campaign were not party members.

In regular teleconferences with party hardheads, volunteers were praised for letterdrops and other good work. Such was the sense of collegiality and shared purpose, hundreds of helpers declined to be reimbursed for petrol and even used their phones to call voters.

“The network was essentially building up a field campaign that was very welcoming of people, whatever their backgrounds,” Mr Gorman said.

“You’re a local teacher? You want to help change the government, come on board! We’ll help you do doorknocking, street stalls or targeting phone-calling.”

Eamonn Fitzpatrick, director at government relations firm Hawker Britton, believes Mr Gorman has what it takes to run a federal campaign, saying he understands federal politics thanks to his work in the office of Kevin Rudd from late 2009 to 2013.

“Patrick was Kevin’s principal and most trusted adviser,” Mr Fitzpatrick said. “That would have been one of the toughest jobs in federal politics because Kevin operates at light speed 24 hours a day.

“To keep up requires someone with an enormous capacity to find solutions, motivate teams and have a sharp political instinct — the very skills every successful state secretary and campaign ­director needs.”

He said Mr Gorman delivered a campaign “precise and thorough in every element so nothing was left to chance”.

In October, the campaign team tested its anti-privatisation message in a practice run privately referred to as the “Electric Shock Campaign”. By January, state Labor was ready to tell a compelling story about the dangers of Premier Colin Barnett’s key election promise: his plan to partly privatise Western Power.

Mr Gorman said he had anticipated the Liberals would better explain the proposed sale, campaign better on their record and “control the conversation”.

“They continued to talk about Labor … and they had announcements that just did not have any theme,” he said.

Mr Fitzpatrick said party bosses across Australia “will be analysing this result down to the last tweet, polling booth, ad buy and key message”.