the big game in town

well the Auckland Regional Council is basically now confused. i texted a friend of mine who works for them and he said it's an interesting mix...

Auckland City gets 4 spots - Citizens and Ratepayers Now (CRN) took the top three (Michael Barnett who you may remember from the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and that grand flick "When Bowties Go Bad", Judith Bassett who I know next to nothing about, and David Hay who was deputy mayor for ACC and (in)famously opposed the Hero parade) and City Vision took out the fourth spot with Mike Lee, who was elected in a by-election after the death of Phil Warren and was returned this time.

Manukau City gets 3 spots - the right have taken two spots (Craig Little, Advancing Auckland, and Bill Burrill, Independent) and RAM have taken the third (Robyn Hughes).

North Shore City gets 2 seats - couldn't find their results online, but it's expected to be two of Joel Cayford (centre-left), Wyn Hoadley (centre I think) and Ian Bradley (right and incumbent).

Waitakere City gets 2 seats - also couldn't find their results online. But Sandra Coney and Paul Walbran, centre-left incumbents, are expected to be returned.

Rodney gets 1 seat - Christine Rose has won - the incumbent Brian Smith was second, but not sure about Ms Rose's affiliations.

Franklin gets 1 seat - and who knows who it went to, I can't find it online.

So best case scenario (for the left):
Centre-left - 4 (Lee, Coney, Walbran, maybe Cayford)
RAM - 1 (Hughes)
Centre-right - 6 definite (Barnett, Bassett, Hay, Little, Burrill, Bradley)
Unknowns - 2 (Rose, whoever wins Franklin)

Clear but control to the right, so I guess David Hay will be the next ARC chair. Arguably this is worse than Gwen Bull.

Interesting to consider is the spoiler role that RAM may have played. In Auckland City they may well have knocked Marie Leadbeater (CV) out, and in Manukau City they have won their only seat on the ARC, which might have gone to Steve Bayliss of centre-left ticket Manukau Vision had they not run. Not sure if the RAM rep and the other centre-lefters will be working together as RAM seemed to cover a pretty wide range of the political spectrum and didn't strike me as "left" so much as "we don't want to run with any of the other tickets".

Helpfully the ARC actually has the results that are known on their site here. Shame on those councils that haven't been up there on the interweb thing - including those who have published other results but not the ARC!