National Party gearing up early for battle ahead
Three things happened this week that showed the National Party moving into battle formation for the 2020 election campaign. The first was the announcement it was starting its candidate selections earlier than normal. The second was the news Paula Bennett will chair its campaign.
It will mean women are running the campaigns for both National and Labour after a long period of men in charge.
Labour has chosen Megan Woods as its campaign chair, taking over from Phil Twyford in 2017.
While Woods will again stand in her Wigram electorate, Bennett will give up her Upper Harbour electorate and stand as a list candidate, saying it will free her up to focus on the campaign.
It will also free up an electorate seat for a new candidate such as Chris Luxon or, oh, maybe a wee Epsom-style deal with another party. The first is the most likely.
However, as regards the “deal” option, the third thing that happened this week was Vernon Tava saying he’s close to signing up the 500 members he needed to register his Sustainability New Zealand
Party with the Electoral Commission.
It’s been dubbed the “teal” party — green mixed with a bit of blue — and is one of National’s options for a support party, should Tava pull it off.
Back in June, Woods likened National leader Simon Bridges to Big Bird on
Sesame Street. Big Bird struggled to convince others his friend Snuffleupagus was real because Snuffleupagus vanished whenever someone came to visit.
He was considered an imaginary friend. Woods was referring to talk National MP Alfred Ngaro would cut away to set up a Christian-based party.
It was seen as an attempt by National to engineer itself a friend.
Tava’s party is less of a genetically engineered option. But it takes a few more than 500 people to get a seat in the House.
A major party could give him a hand by helping him win an electorate, although Tava has said he is agnostic on this front and may not want a hand.
Any attempt at an electorate deal must be handled with extreme care in case of a voter revolt.
Any new party would have to be polling at about 2 per cent to make it worth the risk of trying a seat deal, and that is a slim hope.
Bennett’s ultimate aim is to get National over the line without it, somehow.
This will be the party’s first campaign since 2005 without Steven Joyce in charge. But Bennett learned at Joyce’s knee as the deputy campaign chair for the past two elections.
She is facing a very different battleground to Joyce and does not have his arsenal. Joyce’s main weapon was former National leader Sir John Key.
After the 2014 election, Joyce wrote that the reality was that in the modern age, “a time-poor public puts more and more emphasis on the leader of each team”.
He noted the only campaigns he had seen that did not centre on the leader were Labour’s in 2011 and 2014: both big defeats.
National is not in the same position in the polls as Labour was in those years.
But Bridges does not come with Key’s natural advantage of more than 50 per cent in the preferred PM stakes.
Bennett’s job is to sell Bridges not as a preferable option to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, but as at least a viable option as Prime Minister — and to hope policy and luck can do the rest. In that, National has taken some comfort in internal polling showing Ardern’s appeal is softening.
Should all of that fail, Bennett’s surrender of the Upper Harbour electorate will have the added benefit of freeing her up to leave Parliament without causing the ruckus of a byelection.
That might be less about finding herself back in Opposition as finding herself back there under a different leader.
As for Labour, it is yet to kick into campaign mode — but it does not need to. It is busy governing and has Ardern.
But it has increased its efforts to try to rebut Bridges’ claims it is not doing enough. In doing so, it has also shown it is not beyond stealing a trick from the Book of Joyce.
An online ad this week boasting about low unemployment figures included the last line “delivering for New Zealanders”. That was the National Party election slogan of 2017.