Brownlee banking on grassroots campaign
Gerry Brownlee is opting for a grassroots campaign strategy to maintain his hold on Christchurch’s Ilam electorate. Michael Wright finds out why he prefers street corners to debate platforms.
Gerry Brownlee stands on a footpath, talking into a megaphone, his considerable voice projection no match for the passing traffic.
‘‘Thanks very much for coming along,’’ he says, in between cars, ‘‘I’ll be round here for a few more minutes. If you can please tick two ticks for National on the 23rd of September . . . if you’ve already voted and done that, that’s great too. Thank you very much.’’
The crowd of about 20 people disappear back into suburban Fendalton. One or two of them clap. A cornerstone event in the campaign to re-elect the MP for Ilam comes to an end.
Brownlee is seeking an eighth term as the representative for this pocket of north-west Christchurch. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue. Older and more affluent than average, Ilam has always been safe National territory. But this election Labour is ascendant and there is the added twist here of city councillor Raf Manji, who is running as an independenton an all-or-nothing Christchurch platform. Brownlee is unmoved. He is basing his campaign around street corner meetings, like he always does.
‘‘I really think they’re an incredibly valuable way of campaigning,’’ he says later.
‘‘You get a sense about what the issues are in different parts of the electorate.’’
Brownlee estimates he spoke to about 230 people across seven meetings on Saturday. Over the campaign he will reach about 1000 people this way.
‘‘[That’s] people that you speak to directly and more or less have a conversation with. While they might not be the person asking the question, they’re standing there and they’re listening to it . . . To do that on a doorstep would be an enormous amount of time.’’
‘‘You get a sense about what the issues are in different parts of the electorate.’’ National MP Gerry Brownlee
True, but are these really the people Brownlee needs to reach? Judging by the lines of inquiry on Saturday [Sample question intro: ‘‘Gerry, when National’s reelected, apart from more of the same, which would be great, what do you think . . . ] most of them seem like people who will vote for him anyway.
‘‘I find him quite outstanding,’’ says one woman after the Fendalton meeting, ‘‘He can answer all the questions. He’s got all the stats.’’
‘‘I have been a National supporter since 1948,’’ says a man who asks not to be identified, but shares his surname with a very prominent Christchurch street. He flashes a devilish grin, ’’That’s why I’m changing.’’ If your audience is so absolutely voting for you that they joke about not voting for you, maybe you aren’t getting the cut-through you need. Brownlee seems OK with it.
‘‘A lot of the people who come to street corner meetings probably won’t be engaged on social media,’’ he says, ‘‘If they don’t like the answer to the questions, they’ll certainly respond.’’
The issue is relevant not just because of the race Brownlee finds himself in, but his record of eschewing other electorate events, particularly candidate debates. During the 2014 campaign he was criticised by opponents for missing an Ilam debate, and he skipped two this election before deputising for party colleague Nicky Wagner at a Christchurch Central one and committing lastminute to a University of Canterbury event he’d earlier sent apologies for. At the time, a spokeswoman said Brownlee’s heavy ministerial schedule kept him away. The man himself says this is ‘‘predominantly’’ true.
‘‘The various parties make sure that they’ve got their own pretty vociferous cheerleading crowd.
‘‘Then you generally have MCs who want to stick to a timetable and don’t like it to actually become a debate. It just becomes make a statement, take the flak or the applause and move on.
‘‘I genuinely think they’re of very limited value.’’
‘‘Pretty vociferous’’ is a very good description of Brownlee’s reception at the Ara Institute of Canterbury a couple of weeks back, when he stood in for Wagner. Her opponent, Duncan Webb, and his team had literally packed the venue to the rafters. Heckles rained down on Brownlee from a balcony lined with Labour supporters. They nearly blew the roof off when Brownlee declared the Earthquake Commission’s (EQC) work in Christchurch ’’a roaring success’’.
‘‘I don’t regret [saying] it,’’ he says, ‘‘What I do regret is the amount of time it’s taken for some people to get to settlement with EQC.’’
Brownlee hasn’t been Earthquake Recovery Minister for 18 months, and hasn’t held the rebuild portfolio at all since May, but his legacy in the role continually comes up on the campaign trail. There was the EQC exchange, and plenty of others, at Ara and a couple of stoushes with Labour candidate Anthony Rimell and Manji at the university debate. Manji in particular has harangued Brownlee over his stewardship of the rebuild. ‘‘It’s an economic statement,’’ he said at one point in the debate, while lamenting the lack of rail in post-earthquake Christchurch, ‘‘Which I know a lot about and you don’t.’’
Manji is a genuine wild card in Ilam. Pitching a $1 billion fund for a Christchurch recovery he says has ‘‘lost any sense of direction’’, he would support either major party if elected on the provision they pick up his plan. The Press understands internal National polling had put him within shouting distance of Brownlee. Brownlee dismisses this.
‘‘There’s no in-house polling done by us on the Ilam seat. This is not one of the seats that we poll.’’
Really? An unknown quantity with name recognition and you don’t want to know how he’s doing? ‘‘We haven’t polled Ilam.’’ The street corner meetings would suggest Brownlee doesn’t have anything to worry about, but if no-one has done any polling, a shock result cannot be ruled out. Whatever happens, Brownlee will be back in Parliament; worst-case scenario as an opposition list MP, which would be an almighty reversal of fortune. Or, as two girls leaning out a car window as it roared past a street corner meeting on Saturday more succinctly put it: ‘‘Hi Gerry, bye Gerry!’’