BOOM!
Leo Molloy, the candidate written off by everyone as a joke, is now neck and neck with Efeso Collins…
The Ratepayers’ Alliance-Curia mayoral poll has Labour councillor Efeso Collins and restaurateur Leo Molloy each on 21.7 per cent, Heart of the City chief executive Viv Beck on 20.5 per cent and businessman Wayne Brown on 20.1 per cent.
Freelance media operator Craig Lord, who came third in the 2019 mayoral race, was four points behind the leading pack on 16 per cent.
…there is no way Molloy should be the lead contender alongside the Labour and Green backed Efeso Collins unless Molloy has captured a deep seated resentment against AT, Auckland City Council and Labour.
The fact he is now the lead contender shows Molloy HAS captured that zeitgeist and could very well win!
The woke frame Molloy as Trump so watch for the predictable Twitter outrage and shockwave of this Poll to roll over them. Expect panicked columns in the NZ section of the Guardian citing his rise as evidence of MAGA populism corroding Saint Jacinda.
This will be the most counter-productive response as the cultural backlash against wokeness will gain Molloy votes, not cost him.
The race is insanely tight, but Molloy shouldn’t be neck and neck with the lead Left candidate, the fact he is tells us Labour and the Greens are in trouble politically in Auckland and that there is a resentment populism that is ripe for political representation.
Molloy isn’t a joke, he’s a serious contender and the Left are going to have to change tactics urgently if they want Efeso to win.
Wayne Brown is doing what Bloomberg did in the Democratic Nominations for President and use his vast, vast, vast wealth to buy himself name recognition and place himself as a candidate with no actual team on the ground while Viv Beck keeps channeling all the blue female vote that won’t vote for Molloy.
This is a shockwave of a Poll and forces everyone to dump their presumptions. Molloy has been running an insanely powerful social media campaign that towers over all the other candidates combined.
This is a real race and EVERY vote is going to count.
Game on Auckland.
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I’m voting for Molloy because Auckland Council requires a fresh businesslike approach to take charge and begin to sort it out.
Meanwhile Collins can’t even be arsed to attend most council meetings and, as far as I recall, isn’t on any of the subcommittees: He’s a sleep walking councillor.
If he’s a sleepwalking councilor I certainly wouldn’t want to vote for him. How can we check the validity of your statement. Do they keep attendance records the public can view.
To me their are no appealing candidates.
Unfortunately “business like approach” usually translates to not providing things like decent transport options or having any vision at all . There is no way Auckland should have waited so long to be taking care of things like mass transport
Business people as politicians is the reason this country is fucked up.
The problem with Collins is outside of South and parts of West Auckland he is about as appealing as a 3-day old dog turd. Traditionally these areas also don’t get motivated to vote of local body elections. This is going to need A LOT of money and resources from the Labour machine that have fundraising issues, a hemorrhaging national vote and Collins isn’t one of the team, like say Richard Hills or Phil Goff.
There’s a lot more to Molloy and in that respect on the community welfare side that doesn’t get mentioned.
But l agree, especially the anti AT and to a lesser extent anti council angles will be very productive. And in that respect Efeso is very status quo.
The wider picture is that FOUR centre right candidates are neck and neck with Efeso. Any one of them quits and endorses another, will lead to the others (probably) also rolling over, and suddenly its a 30 point lead.
Molloy is dirty, and a nasty bastard which will obviously suit certain voters and all the right wing pundits. There will be white people who while “not racist” will just not feel right having a brown Supercity Mayor.
Efeso just needs to turn out the vote like Len Brown did, including organising group voting sessions and mail ins.
If the right candidates all stay in Efeso will win imo. The worry is that the right candidates will tactically withdraw, although Wayne Brown’s ego will probably see him stay in.
The proverbial in the room is low turnout–32–38% in recent years. Post is just about dead, renting and transience of abode is a thing, so even white middle class people do not necessarily vote in Auck. local elections.
Turnout will be king in this Supercity election.
You got it!
All the moaning and bitching but they won’t get out and vote. Oh, there’s “No-one on the list I Iike or want”? The mythology has it that ‘it’s easy to get things done, why don’t they?’
If it’s such a piece of piss get in, get the job and do it. The leader of the pack, the always got all the answers ‘Why Don’t They’? mob is Mike Hosking of course.
Correct, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain and you’re a moron. Sums up Hosking and supporters.
Voting Molloy, just because it 1) riles up the people who have been screaming at anyone right-of-Stalin for the past six years that we are racist/homophobic/hateful people who deserve what we get and 2) fuck Auckland Transport.
AT will run ringsaround Malloy. And everyone else.
A joke candidate? There’s a bit of a current precedent for “joke candidates” proving their worth, for example, you know, that bloke Zelensky. Has Molloy done Dancing with the Stars? (Speaking, as I am, as an ex-Aucklander, ex many years ago, who remembers the red rattler suburban train service out west, so not really qualified to comment.)
I don’t like any of them. Can we vote not to have a mayor?
It looks like Molloys to lose. He has Nationals backing( although typically National are denying this)plus big business money driving his campaign. To use Molloys own words ” the whole lot want me in”.
His style fits well with the National party, nasty, punative and at times corrupt.
Yep, he is a venal little shit–treated the Auckland restaurant scene as a personal money trench–just the guy for old school Auckland business community, and bonus point, he is white.
Efeso is in it to win it and will do if the right wing candidates stay on the ballot.
ds. What a wonderful idea, no mayor. Imagine no PM either, just the hopeful and the vicious wafting around the Beehive desperately wanting a journo to appear and ask them something, ask them anything at all.
No Parliamentary speaker either, just random pollie control via overhead sprinklers operated by the last emperor now employed pruning potatoes and sweeping the tui droppings at Bellamy’s back door where Chris Bishop’s dad doesn’t lurk dreaming of a hot sausage roll and no buses pass no more and none of the girls in black ever clean the backs of their shoes walking down Lambton Quay.
A general sort of politician abolishment to welcome the coming spring would be rather nice. Dancing in the streets.
Hearty!
I’d vote for a bald guy; at least he wouldn’t have a lot of hair to shine, brush and colour, taking up precious time, along with the make-up that today’s modern woman still seems attached to after the spirit of feminism has faded.
Molly will get the viaduct bars humming again.
Auckland! Meh!
What the usual suspects above are missing is that the Auckland Supercity was always set up for a corporatist takeover of the peoples assets. Unaccountable CCOs that just laugh at Councillors and the Mayor, and spit on community representatives.
Mr Collins has already advised he will address that, albeit needing a change in legislation to ultimately kick the bludgers out.
What a bunch of tory suck ups you are… Brown and proud–go Efeso!
I’ll second that.
God help us. Molloy is a dinosaur who never left the 80s. He offers a platform that is nothing more than greed, ego, more cars, self indulgent vanity projects and bad hair…..sound familiar?
Let’s remember Auckland is one of the largest local government areas in the the Southern Hemispere.
What’s Leo’s focus? Certainly not the people of Rodney, Franklin or the wider city.
No…surprise, surprise its the Waterfront…yawn.
So c’mon Auckland lets all pay to scrap the Port and build a stadium… just down the road from Leo’s restaurant…whilst he tirelessly “puts an end to the reckless spending” of AC’s faceless bureacratics.
Whilst we are at it, let’s just “park climate change”, ensure the Auckland motorist’s god given right to sit idly in congestion is paramount and irrationally fantasise about a fuel source that no one in the world has actually managed to roll out at scale.
Guess what Leo, a big part of most proposed Hydrogen infrastructure around the world generally involves a functional Port!
And then there’s his planned scourge of the Council Bureacracy, like some petulant Night of the Long Knives. Why vote for leadership, when we have unadulterated vengeance on offer? Nothing like draining the swamp to rark up a disillusioned voting public….sound familiar?
AC certainly needs better transparency and accountability but I doubt bullying the managerial elite into submission is the way to achieve it, coz let’s face it peeps, that’s the AC bureacracy’s modus operandi. They will eat him alive.
Besides, if Leo’s respect of the Courts and the Law, in relation to a recent high profile murder case is anything to go by… I suspect whatever Leo may save the ratepayer by gutting Council will likely be be lost to “gardening leave” and undisclosed settlements, given Leo clearly thinks he is above the law and can behave however he wants when it comes to due process…..sound familiar?
Seriously reading over his “Plan”, I don’t think this guy has a clue of what the Mayor’s actual role is, the limited power the position weilds or how the Council machine actually works…..sound familiar?
I’m sure if Aucklanders are stupid enough to vote him in, he wont be Making Auckland Great Again….he’ll simply turn it into a outdated backward, loud, garish nightmare, much like his taste in fashion.
Honestly the only difference between Molloy and America’s Orange Bafoon is, that clown didn’t actually dress like one.
Big Pharma backed “get ya shot” Molloy is exactly what Auckland deserves. Cuz dumb lives matter.
Beck looks like she’d be a female version of Goff, bland, vanilla, dollar each way and the malaise that is Auckland Council would happily continue and worsen. Heart of the City of stopped breathing a while back under get tenure although I don’t blame her for all the CBD’s issues.
Brown appears the type who would struggle to get on with
Low cost homes owned by the council and able to be bought by low income pensioners, sit empty in the middle of a housing crisis. The question is, why is local and central governments housing sitting empty while they accuse everyone else of why there is a housing crisis and not doing anything?
‘Top secret sell-off’: Council sells stake in millions of dollars of land behind closed doors
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/top-secret-sell-off-council-sells-stake-in-millions-of-dollars-of-land-behind-closed-doors/43BQXRTE25GHPCMNJOFNG2DGUM/
“She said when retirees died or moved out of their units, the units could sit empty for years without the council spending money to upkeep them or advertise them as being back for sale.”
Like transport there seems to be plenty of money around taken in taxes mostly from the middle class, then spent very poorly or sitting empty.
More than two thirds of Auckland’s $59m light rail spend is on consultants
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/more-than-two-thirds-of-aucklands-59m-light-rail-spend-is-on-consultants/5RKQQX4PHASBVADWDAXEJTTZX4/
Auckland like I imagine everywhere has its pros and cons but you often have an affinity with your home town or city that seems to mitigate some of the cons at least . . and yes you are right we are all New Zealanders before anything else.
Love Hospital Hill in Napier and your syrah as well.
Blues lost again.
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