Len Brown, The Spinoff and Boag/Slater – the 3 biggest losers from Local Elections

Hands up who reads The Spinoff

The 3 biggest losers from the elections are:

Len Brown: His leadership became tainted and damaged after Cameron Slater dumped sleazy details of his affair all over the NZ Blogosphere. His two terms sink beneath a swamp of wilful blindness towards him despite his leadership as the first SuperCity Mayor. It’s a sad demise and history should judge him far kinder than the present.

The Spinoff: Blue Green Millennial cash for copy site showed their true political colours when they backed neoliberal hawk Bill Ralston over old school lefty Mike Lee. Chris Trotter made the case…

On Tuesday morning The Spinoff, in collaboration with Generation Zero, released their list of endorsed candidates for the Auckland Council elections. Following the embedded links, I read, with a mixture of disbelief and outrage, the following sentences:

“At first glance [Mike] Lee seems like a pretty good councillor. He’s in favour of the CRL, [Central Rail Loop] and his bio says he’s a campaigner for good public transport. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll see he’s an ancient Waiheke sea goblin intent on imprisoning Auckland in a 1950s time prison.”

It goes without saying that this assessment is as wrong as it is vicious. Mike Lee’s record of service to the people of Auckland is extraordinary. From the protection of municipal assets (especially the Ports of Auckland) to the creation of regional parks, his contributions to the city are large and tangible. Even the author of the above-quoted outpouring of bile, Hayden Donnell, couldn’t avoid acknowledging Mike as a “campaigner” for “good public transport”. It’s one way of describing the guy who secured the electrification of the Auckland rail network – I can think of better ones.

…The Spinoff need to hide their true political leanings far better than this. The line between glitter bearded  hipsters and middle class Blue Green wankers is a fine one.

Boag/Slater: The biggest loser here are the right wing power players in Auckland. Lusk-Carrick-Slater went up against Boag and both sides lost. The simmering frustrations within the Right will continue to boil until all out war erupts. Boat hates Slater more than the entire Left wing combined.

Two of these people are angels. 1 is in disguise.