Ex-auckland mayoral candidate Molloy wants to meet with Beck
Volatile ex-auckland mayoral candidate Leo Molloy says he will be meeting with Viv Beck’s campaign team this week to discuss a public endorsement of his former opponent.
Potentially, Beck could snag a chunk of Molloy’s claimed 75,000 votes of support.
But the controversial Auckland businessman and self-described “hospo legend” said an endorsement would hinge on where pro-business candidate Beck sits on the future of the Ports of Auckland.
Molloy quit the Auckland mayoral race on Friday morning, just prior to the deadline for all candidates to nominate themselves for New Zealand’s 2022 Local Government elections.
A crowded group of candidates including Heart of the City chief executive Beck, former Far North Mayor and businessman Wayne Brown, and Molloy had been splitting the right-wing polling vote for months.
The owner of Headquarters bar in Auckland’s Viaduct, Molloy had said he wants to sell the leases of the Ports of Auckland’s 77ha of space in perpetuity and open up the harbour to public access and a possible waterfront stadium.
“What I am going to do, hand on heart, I’m going to meet with Viv Beck’s team this [coming] week, and we’re going to talk to them, just a very informal chat,” Molloy said.
“I’d really need to understand what they’re going to do with certain assets before I could decide, ‘yeah, I can endorse you’ . . . ports is obviously the most critical in terms of adding value to the city.”
Molloy’s poll numbers dropped over the past month from 23 per cent to 14.5 per cent. Brown had overtaken him in Thursday’s poll, with 18.6 per cent support — still behind the frontrunner, Efeso Collins, on 22.3 per cent. Beck was on 12.5 per cent and Craig Lord on 7.2 per cent.
Molloy told the Herald he believed he had about 75,000 votes based on a low to average voter turnout estimate of 32 per cent of the Auckland regional population in the Local Government Elections on October 8.
Molloy’s estimate can be reached by taking the 2019 local government elections’ 35 per cent voter turnout of Auckland’s population and breaking it down by Molloy’s approximate 15 per cent of decided voters in Thursday’s poll.
“They’re big numbers for an established party, but huge for a nonaligned independent. That’s why they all want my vote,” Molloy said.
Pollster and commentator David Farrar’s company Curia Market Research conducted Thursday’s mayoral poll and says a potential Molloy endorsement of Beck would change dynamics.
“It would be a significant boost because the danger for Viv in the campaign would be if people think you can’t win, people don’t like to back someone they don’t think can win. So it certainly would be very helpful,” Farrar said.
“I think the most useful thing is if he does that the media reaction puts Viv back into contention. I don’t mean she’s not in contention but obviously in our poll she’s a bit behind, so if he came out and endorsed her I would expect it would help her as a threeperson race.”
However, Farrar said it would be unrealistic to think all of Molloy’s support would simply jump to Beck based off a public endorsement. “They’re your supporters, not your followers, so you never get all of them there,” Farrar said. “His profile was somewhat different to Viv Beck’s. He is more the sort of outsider coming in with no experience whereas Viv is more someone who’s dealt with council and is presenting differently. So I think it’s definitely beneficial to Viv Beck if he endorses her.”
Molloy said to endorse Beck he would ideally want an ultimatum given to the Ports to downsize its footprint to only occupy the container terminal on Fergusson Wharf.
“The rest of it has to be handed over to the city within a maximum of say three or four years, develop it from there.”