About a month ago, I produced a program called "Politics: After the Spotlight". It was a look at how difficult adjusting to "the real world" after political life can be.

One of the people that had been recommended to me as a good person to talk to about moving on after politics was Ken Boshcoff, former Mayor of Thunder Bay and MP for Thunder Bay-Rainy River from 2004 to 2008. I called him, he had some interesting things to say, and he agreed to take part in the program. Along with the other guests, he talked about what it's like to face political defeat and how important it is to try and move beyond it.

Sometimes politicians have trouble moving beyond political defeat. In fact, it's common for defeated politicians to immediately begin planning to run again rather than thinking about how they can contribute to society outside of politics. It's a way of dealing with political defeat without really dealing with it.

So you can imagine my surprise when I learned on Tuesday that Mr. Boshcoff had just been elected as a councillor-at-large in Thunder Bay.

Not only that, but he has been, and for the moment continues to be, the federal Liberal Party's nominee for Thunder Bay-Rainy River in the next election.

Just to put it in a nutshell: While he was on our program talking about how he'd moved on from politics, he was running for a city council seat and positioned to run in a federal campaign.

Needless to say I was pretty surprised. Why would you appear on a program about "life after politics" if you were running in one election and ready to run in a second election at the same time? Isn't that the definition of not being able to leave politics behind?

I e-mailed Mr. Boshcoff to ask him why he never mentioned to me or Steve in the course of producing last month's program that he was in fact trying to "get back in the game". His response was that he just never had a chance to bring it up. It's true that I never asked him "any plans to run again?" I had assumed, based on the recommendation I received, that he had left politics behind. (As a former boss of mine used to say to me repeatedly "never assume and never presume.") So shame on me for not thinking to ask. Still, you'd think he could have found a way to bring it up.

Regardless, it still raises the question of whether Mr. Boshcoff has really been able to leave his 2008 defeat behind as effectively as he indicated to us. I've e-mailed him about that too, and have yet to receive a response.

At this point I can only speculate, but to me this is another example of just how powerful the pull of politics can be, and what a rush it must be to know that voters chose you to represent them. Taking a look at a photo of Mr. Boshcoff following his win on Monday, someone wrote to me: "this is one happy dude."