Spanblather: muesli mayor

Saturday, October 09, 2004

muesli mayor

Hubbard appears to have caned Banks, in provisional results for the Auckland City Mayoralty.

Interesting to see the size of the majority (approx 17,000 votes) and the size of Fletcher's share - only 11,000-odd, so considerably less than the difference. i wonder how she will really feel about this result - it can't have been a surprise, and she has seemed to be very emotionally involved in the race (but then that is often the story the media run about lone female candidates).

Rumour has it that Banks was seen cleaning out his office yesterday, but i take that with a whopping great grain of salt - he doesn't seem to me the kind of man to do that, and i'm sure there will be a transitional period to ensure good governance.

Given that the centre-left has basically taken control of the council (6 City Vision councillors, 3 Labour, plus the mayor on most things maybe?) the anticipation is that Hubbard will pick up Bruce Hucker as his deputy mayor, and the centre-left will be a heavy influence on him. Both left and right will be scrambling to get in the ear of a man who may be much more aloof than many suspect. While I think Hubbard will want advice, I don't think he will be naive about attempts to control him (or at least not for long).

The 2 Action Hobson councillors could also play a pivotal role. Christine Caughey ran under a joint CV-Team Auckland ticket in a by-election (which she lost) so she must be reasonably centre to have been selected for that. I suspect moves will be made early on by CV to bring them into the left fold.

The reality for the centre-left is that they will disagree - in particular there may be disagreements with the Greens (Neil Abel in Eden-Albert, and others on community boards) over the various roading projects. But if a process can be agreed early on to allow "agree to disagree", within certain limits, then the team should be able to hang together and build for next time.

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