Candidates’ imagination tested in quest to be noticed
Candidates had a variety of ruses, intentional or not, of standing out from the crowd.
You won’t find cats on the voting papers for the Palmerston North City Council elections.
That is because they are not on the electoral roll, and would not be competent.
The point of clarification was worth mentioning because of the amusing situation at the Pioneer Highway sign farm at the entrance to the urban part of the city.
City council candidates have booked out most of the spaces.
But then, in the middle of them, a sign marketing the musical production Cats pops up.
Candidate, candidate, candidate, Cats, candidate .... daffodil patch.
According to reviews, Cats isa great show, and would probably catch some votes if it was eligible.
But the 150-odd people who turned out to meet the human candidates for council enjoyed a janine.rankin@fairfaxmedia.co.nz
pretty good show too. It was free, and there was even a cup of tea at the end of it.
It could not have been stage managed better.
Mayoral contender Ross Barber began by bewildering the audience with his promise to move the Bible into the city offering indemnity, offering to buy all our debts, and set us free-to-have medicinal marijuana.
And after that, incumbent mayor Grant Smith had his two minutes’ worth, a speech he would not have needed to make if Barber had not lodged his 11th hour nomination.
There were 25 council candidates to speak. Two others sent apologies, and sitting councillor Leonie Hapeta sent a video.
Facilitator Marise Clark insisted and ensured that a cracking pace was set. Two minutes is two minutes, and she was on her feet micro-seconds after the ‘‘time’s up’’ bell rang.
Barely 20 seconds was lost between speakers, making it an hour-long meeting packed with information and impressions.
For in two minutes, it is rather difficult to do a great deal for your profile, and surely, many members of the audience would have had trouble recalling exactly who was who by the end of the meeting.
Mind you, the vast majority of people there were your habitual voters and council watchers who probably knew all the candidates already. Others were there in support of their person, or in the case of the Labour Party team, their people.
Candidates had a variety of ruses, intentional or not, of standing out from the crowd.
Yes, many attempted to talk about policies and plans and achievements and important issues. But it is difficult to explain anything profound under such constraints. The best that could be hoped for, really, was to be noticed.
It would be hard to forget Elizabeth Paine. She was the one on crutches. Or Aleisha Rutherford. She had to pause several times to sip on her water bottle, struggling as she said from bronchitis.
Finance and performance committee chairman Susan Baty seemed unusually hesitant in her delivery, but the people who were watching knew that was because of the one fly in the building that seemed to be attracted to the face in the spotlight.
The Labour Party candidates used their time wisely to introduce themselves first, then address one of the four campaign planks they were all standing on, and get in an extra pitch for their team-mates in conclusion.
And Abi Symes’ bright red twist of hair will leave few people wondering who she was. Definitely not your grey, middle-aged image of a local body politician.
Jim Jefferies, heading for a seventh term, showed how politically astute he was, using humour and playing to our fears.
He hooked on to the one thing everyone was talking about. The Havelock North contaminated water-induced gastroenteritis outbreak. And how that illustrated the importance of councils getting the basics right.
End notes
Also on the subject of upcoming elections, a regular meeting attendee has observed that at this time of the council term, one can expect to see what we will euphemistically refer to as ‘‘behaviour’’.
It is one of the reasons new candidates have an uphill battle to be elected, as the incumbents can claim a legitimate reason to be speaking up and being quoted in the media as they are still carrying out essential council business.
Meetings grow noticeably longer. So it was interesting that Chris Teo-sherrell, who is not seeking re-election, was continuing to be so painstaking in his questions, and so outspoken when he finally found a gold nugget among the detail.
Only Teo-sherrell was likely to have probed so deeply into where the money was coming from to pay for the Ngahere Park Bridge. The inquiries revealed a bunch of projects for improving cycle and bus facilities had been sacrificed.
His condemnation of the budget-switching must have come close to challenging the convention that elected members can only criticise the chief executive, not the people he employs.