A loss is as good as a win
Nearly every Green Party campaign for an electorate seat is hopeless, but, writes Thomas Manch, the election still presents an opportunity for them.
Ricardo Mene´ ndez March was a nobody when his face began appearing on roadside billboards.
A migrant from Tijuana, Mexico — which explains the conspicuous American accent — with no political track record, he had spent a decade in Auckland working as a film projectionist before digitisation made him redundant. He moved into hospitality and then migrant advocacy.
That was his entry into a doomed-to-fail Green Party electorate campaign for the Mount Roskill seat in 2017. He claimed 1200 votes.
But this election year is different for Mene´ ndez March.
‘‘I do probably get more media coverage than most backbencher MPs,’’ he says.
History tells us that nearly every single Green Party campaign for an electorate seat is hopeless. The party’s co-founder Jeanette Fitzsimons, who passed away this week, is the only one to have succeeded – and that was in Coromandel in 1999.
Green candidates instead raise their hands to put their party on the map, and pitch for a high enough placing in the party’s list to make it into Parliament. And this election year presents an opportunity for many.
The party is down five high-ranking members since the 2017 election, and with a potential gender imbalance in the party’s top 10 spots – six are women – the equity-conscious party may look to promote men.
Mene´ ndez March, now running in Maungakiekie, Auckland’s One Tree Hill, stands a chance of gaining a high list placing.
He has a profile – now – and his activism credentials have been bolstered since taking up a job as co-ordinator for Auckland Action Against Poverty (AAAP) after the 2017 election.
Always ready to hammer the Labour-led Government, he has been beamed onto breakfast television, broadcast on drive-time radio and quoted in newspapers countless times – on average once a week, he estimates.
Throughout, the message has been consistent. The Government is failing the poor, benefits are too low and housing too expensive. And he’s gained some traction. Take the furore over queues at Manurewa’s Work and Income office, for example.
In July, RNZ arrived on a Thursday to find people queueing from as early as 2am to receive emergency grants – with the help of AAAP’s advocates. A week later, Breakfast’s John Campbell was broadcasting live from the queue and asking questions of Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni, who fronted up.
Some Green insiders rate his prospects, but a media profile doesn’t always make a Green MP.
‘‘I’m running to basically make sure that these issues go into the negotiating table,’’ Mene´ ndez March says, ‘‘I would not want to be standing next to the minister pretending that they’re doing enough.’’
He says his work has the potential in the Maungakiekie electorate where AAAP is based, to bring out low-income Ma¯ ori and Pasifika voters who would traditionally steer clear of the Greens.
‘‘There’s a real opportunity to sort of tap into bread and butter issues that these communities care about.’’
The inner-Auckland electorate, reaching from Ellerslie to the edge of Manukau, has traditionally been a bellwether seat, meaning it has switched between Labour and National along with the Government.
National Party MP Denise Lee was the circuit breaker, claiming the seat with 15,000 votes in the 2017 election in a year that Labour won. Lee says she is readying to campaign for the ‘‘real awesome Kiwi battlers who live here’’.
‘‘People here on the ground want to see someone active for the whole term and, you know, they don’t want a Johnny-come-lately.’’
Labour MP Priyanca Radhakrishnan, who was 2100 votes shy of Lee in the 2017 election, hoped to be nominated by Labour to contest the seat.
Green MP Chlo¨ e Swarbrick, this year contesting Auckland Central, ran in the Maungakiekie electorate in 2017, fresh off the back of an Auckland mayoralty campaign. She received 4000 votes, twice the party vote the Greens gained in the electorate. She could have cost Radhakrishnan the seat.
Mene´ ndez March isn’t promising to topple Lee. He is practised in the party line, which amounts to ‘‘vote tactically’’.
‘‘I’m always very clear that if people want to see somebody like myself advocating for decisions in Parliament, they’re going to have to party vote Green,’’ he says.
But he first needs to impress Green supporters, and he feels positive about his chances.
‘‘I am asking the Green Party membership to consider putting a grassroots advocate, who understands issues of inequality in the top 10, so that we can actually do these issues.’’
As a broad generalisation, the Greens are divided into two camps. There’s the environmentalists focused on climate change and those focused on social justice and inequality. (This is contested by Green members, who say any divide is overstated.)
The current cohort of Green MPs, those next in line for senior positions if they eventuate, have a strong showing on the social justice and inequality side – Jan Logie, Swarbrick, and Golriz Ghahraman.
There’s also excitement off the back of the school climate strikes in 2019, a feeling that urgency surrounding the existential crisis – particularly for New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours – is informing mainstream politics.
All roads lead to climate action for the Greens. MPs and candidates are pitching issues such as income inequality and a mental health crisis with a climate lens.
Candidates with track records in environmentalism could be favoured. Recently announced candidates Luke Wijohn, an 18-year-old school strike for climate change organiser, and Greenpeace senior advisor Steve Abel have such credentials.
Many say Teanau Tuiono is a front runner. (‘‘Well that’s nice,’’ he says on hearing this.) Tuiono is well connected in the Greens, and has a two-decade long resume that fits.