Fuster and Cluck ride again?

mickysavage
8 years ago
Categories: auckland supercity, C&R, len brown, local body elections, national, same old national, the praiseworthy and the pitiful
Tags: john palino, luigi wewege, simon lusk

Remuera branch meetings of the National Party must be fun events these days. John Palino has all but confirmed that he is going to give the Auckland mayoralty another run and if the rumours are correct his campaign manager will be the one and only Simon Lusk.

From Rebecca Wright at one news:

John Palino is standing to be the Mayor of Auckland.

He will make the announcement next Monday at 2pm at his new cafe, Friend of the Farmer in Takanini.

I know this because the man himself just rang me to let me know where and when he will be declaring.

I’ve also spoken to several people Palino has approached to be part of his campaign, all of whom – without exception – have run a mile.

She followed it up with this update.

Controversial right-wing political strategist Simon Lusk is confirmed to be running John Palino’s mayoral campaign.

Lusk is an ally of Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater and a central figure in Nicky Hagar’s book Dirty Politics.

On his website Lusk says “he believes that the amateur nature of politics in New Zealand means that spending money and professionalism can win campaigns”.

John Slater is not involved at this stage.

Cameron Slater has rubbished the idea without offering any further information. Time will tell.

Victoria Crone must be wondering what has happened to the famed National Party discipline and Mark Thomas will have an interesting eight months travelling through the city all to no avail. Palino’s inclusion will make what already appeared to be a very likely outcome for Phil Goff into an almost inevitability.

The announcement raises all sorts of questions:

Who is funding the campaign?
If Lusk is involved how much is he going to be paid?
Will Luigi Wewege be involved?
Did Palino and Slater really think that by breaking the news just after the last local body election they could engineer Palino into the Mayor’s office?
Does he still deny knowing about the Len Brown affair even though most of Auckland’s right knew about it well in advance?
Does he agree that threatening to expose the news of the affair unless Brown resigns may be blackmail?
Will he run as a C&R candidate?
Will the right have two tickets this year, C&R and Auckland Future?

Interesting times …