Another Act candidate bites the dust

• mickysavage
• 8 months ago
• Categories: act, election 2023

At this rate Act may not have enough candidates to fill its list of MPs in Parliament.

A fifth Act candidate has pulled out, days before the list has to be lodged.

From the Herald:

The Act Party has lost its fifth candidate in eight weeks after Brent Miles, who was running in Taranaki King Country, withdrew from the race just over a month out from the election.

A party spokesman said Miles withdrew last week for personal reasons and “we have no further comment”.

I suspect Brent Miles is another cooker candidate and something has been discovered in his social media that was to difficult to sustain.

The other candidates who have withdrawn include the following:

1. Elaine Naidu Franz who had compared vaccine mandates to Nazi concentration camps.
2. Anto Coats who made parody songs about Ardern and sang she was “throwing you in the Gulag”.  He nominally resigned for personal reasons.
3. Darren Gilchrest who claimed Covid-19 vaccines were linked to drownings. He also claimed to be standing down for personal reasons.
4. Scott Boness who did not give a reason for his withdrawal, and said he wanted to wait until “the other side” of the election.  He also said “Be as cynical, as theoretical as you want, but you never know what the potential outcome of a story might have on the way people view how they vote.”

There are a few other candidates they should have got rid of.  Like sitting MP Mark Cameron who is described by ACT as being an authentic voice for rural people but who is also a climate change denier and a Donald Trump supporter.  He also has abused Ardern and described her as “pea brained halfwit”, a “feckless wench”, “a IQ light weight”, a “vacuous teenager” while at the same time thinking that Trump has been making the United States “awesome” during his term as president.

Or Zane Cousins who has been the subject of four complaints relating to his performance as a real eastate agent.  One of the complaints resulted in a censure.

To top off the sense of unreality ACT has proposed a confidence only deal with National.  Decisions on budgets and legislation would be made on a case by case basis.  The prospects of brinkmanship would be very high.  National has responded to this proposal by indicating that it does not deal in hypotheticals.

There are distinct signs of American style politics infecting one of our major parties.  Voters should avoid these parties like the plague.