Yellowknife North race for MLA is extremely online

Don't mess with Jan Vallillee.

On Saturday, the candidate for MLA in Yellowknife North posted a story to her campaign's Facebook page about beating up a mugger while on vacation in Victoria.

"I kneed him hard, then kicked him in the face while he was bent over, then punched him in the head/face multiple times. He ran off holding his sensitive bits and face because I broke either hisjaw or nose," she wrote.

It's one of the stranger moments in a campaign that has been partly defined by the candidate's online interactions.

Yellowknife North itself is an unusual riding. It combines the neighbourhoods of Old Town, parts of downtown,and Niven Lake, a newer suburb, and is bracketed on both ends by off-the-grid communities the houseboats of Yellowknife Bay, and homes dotting the Ingraham Trail, far from the centre of town.

That diversity is represented on the ballot by Vallillee and her two competitors, houseboater Rylund Johnson and Niven Lake's Cory Vanthuyne, the incumbent.

Each is taking a different approach to campaigning.

Vallillee: 'My message is not violence'

Vallillee, who no longer lives in the riding, says she chose the district because of her connection to the Ingraham Trail.

Her platform includes 10areas of focus, but she says her "top two" are improving the territory's health care and addictions treatment system, and developing the resource economy.

While she's been active on the doorsteps, she's taken to pushing her message online as part of an effort to conduct an eco-friendly campaign.

"I am trying to keep a really low-waste footprint, and live by example," she said.

She's finding that message has been well-received even among those who don't get a vote.

"I'm an animal lover I don't even eat a lot of meat in my diet, I eat mostly vegetarian and vegan so I'm able to connect with not only the people, but their pets," she said.

Vallillee said herpost about the mugging was an attempt to share an inspirational message with her female followers.

"My message is not violence by any means," she said. "My message is, 'Ladies, you have more power than you realize.'"

"I've had women reach out to me to say, 'Thank you for sharing that story, I'm going to go sign up for a self-defence course.'"

Johnson runs on social media accessibility

Just behind Vallillee in the follower count on Facebook is Rylund Johnson, who isbuilding his campaign partly on a message of social media accessibility.

"I think I'm just running a bit of a funner social media campaign," said the 29-year-old. "I'm also engaging in comments sections all the time."

Before the writ even dropped, he attracted attention by complaining to local media outlet Cabin Radio that Vanthuyne, his MLA, had blocked him on Twitter.

"I think it's a bad precedent," he said at the time.

"Social media is the future of communication, and they're fundamental platforms to our democracy," he told CBCNews.

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Johnson posts to an Instagram account and publishes a weekly podcast as part of his campaign, in addition to the traditional online combination of website and Facebook page.

"I think it has a huge advantage of being more youth target[ed], when 80 per cent of our youth don't vote in the N.W.T.," he said. "That's the single most important thing to me in this election, is getting that voter turnout higher."

His platform includes ambitious ideas, like a guaranteed basic income and universal child care, items he proposes to bring forward as private members' bills.

Johnson initially had more success selling his message online than in person. He said Vanthuyne and Vallillee's voters felt "awkward" on the doorstep in a post on his Facebook page.

"I do a lot of work on social media, but at the end of the day the most important thing is knocking on doors and talking to people," he said.

"I've found it's just getting easier and easier," he said. "I'm getting to know the issues that people want to hear about better, and I'm really just hitting my stride now."

Campaigning has evolved: Vanthuyne

Incumbent Cory Vanthuyne is winning the follower count on Facebook, partly because his campaign page has carried them over from his time as MLA a legally grey advantage incumbents are enjoying this year.

Vanthuyne has used the platform the least of any of the riding's candidates, mostly posting lists of concerns he's heard on the doorstep.

In contrast to Johnson, who discusses his policy ideas in videos posted to the platform, Vanthuyne's most recent video is of a 2016 hail storm in Fort Providence.

Vanthuyne is running on a platform that includes establishing a youth council and turning Yellowknife into a charter city.

Notably, he also says the territory must "streamline" its government, and wouldn't rule out laying off workers in upper management a proposal sure to be controversial in a district that's home to onein fiveof the city's territorial government workers.

"I think what needs to happen is there needs to be a genuine reinvention of government, over time," he said.

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"I'm not begrudging the people that do the fantastic work that they do in senior management and higher but it can't be at the cost of putting the right resources at the frontlines."

Vanthuyne says his work on the doorstep, not online, will be key to his success.

"A lot of the demographic of your riding may not necessarily be on social media," he said. "Especially when you go into Old Town the old time Yellowknife crowd is down there, and they have a particular expectation that they want to talk to you at the door or at the coffee shops or on the streets."

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He also acknowledges that the game has changed since he ran his first campaign for city council in 2009.

"It used to be that you would just get a black and white brochure printed up do a bit of door-knocking yourself, and go to a couple public forums," he said."That's all changed."

The price tag has changed as well.

"It used to be a couple thousand dollars could get you through a campaign," he said. Now, "it's anywhere from 10, 20, even beyond $20,000 now to run a campaign."