With the shenanigans going on over in Botany, other problems are starting to surface as well. The tipline has received two credible tips over this weekend.
Botany, which was supposed to be a coronation for Christopher Luxon, has turned into a donnybrook pitting a sitting MP against a cast of players for the blue ribbon seat.
Upper Harbour gerrymander underway
The process the party was supposed to follow was for Botany to open nominations and when they closed, nominations were going to open for Upper Harbour to select a candidate to replace Paula Bennett, who is standing down to mis-manage National’s campaign.
Botany has now turned into a nightmare, but Paula Bennett had also banked on settling a rather time-consuming and likely to be damaging lawsuit, before nominations would open for Upper Harbour. That won’t be happening and that court case now starts smack in the middle of her trying to manipulate the selection for Upper Harbour.
Her electorate membership is barely over 200 which means that the delegates can easily be stacked with regional ring-ins.
So, with time running out on her to manipulate the selection process, she decided to call a sneaky meeting at 0745 on Monday morning to try and get a special resolution passed by her committee to truncate the selection process. They will need a quorum, of course, but it is unheard of for these sorts of meetings to be held at that time.
This may not work however as we are hearing about disgruntled members looking at challenging this development in the courts for lack of proper process.
Basically, Upper Harbour is trying to gerrymander their selection and will try to go to selection earlier so that none of the Botany losers can come across thereby guaranteeing Lisa Whyte or another local the candidacy.
Sabre rattling in North Shore
Following the local body election results, there have been some stern words, a few resignations, and some threats in North Shore after meddling by the MP and New Zealand’s favourite grandmother in the local board fights.
Word is Maggie spiked her own campaign chair and others’ campaigns and lobbied for others.
Her behaviour has so incensed her electorate that yesterday she was told in no uncertain terms that they have moved beyond mere sabre rattling because of her overbearing and bullying behaviour.
This is compounded by the fact that they have almost no members and the board won’t let them go to selection. There may well be a challenge in North Shore.
All is not lost though. Smart candidates contemplating Botany might be better served quickly chucking their names in the hat in either North Shore or Upper Harbour. If you are going to have a donnybrook it is far better to have one not two, as the winner in Botany will then face one of the most brutal and nasty fights of their life to win Botany off Jami-lee Ross.