Updated: It's a cliche that a contest is someone's to lose, but in the case of Efeso Collins and the Auckland mayoralty, it's true. Now that Viv Beck has withdrawn, the centre-right will narrow its forces behind Wayne Brown and try to overturn history.
Comment: Efeso Collins is growing into his role as the Auckland mayoral candidate the others know they have to beat, the one who started with the greatest advantage of all.
In a super city that has, four elections out of four, seen Labour-aligned candidates prevail handsomely, his position as the candidate from central-left casting should be a formidable plus.
Len Brown and Phil Goff have painted Auckland reddish over those four elections, winning an average 48 percent of the vote to the centre right's main contenders' average of 29 percent.
Goff put a cool 99,000-vote margin on the second-placed contender, former MP and broadcaster John Tamihere, last time.
Collins, endorsed by both the Labour and Green parties, would have started this campaign to fill the retiring Goff's chair knowing three things.
First, that pink-red tinge in the Auckland ratepaying electorate should push a half decent candidate to the lead. Second, he was not as well known or as electorally decorated as Brown or Goff. And third, he is bidding to be the first Pasifika mayor of the largest Polynesian city in the world, with all that that carries with it, including some of the racism he's endured on social media and elsewhere.
The other side of politics was divided but is solidifying right up to the moment voting forms are issued. First by Leo Molloy, who bowed out as polls turned against him, and now on Friday morning with the withdrawal of Heart of the City chief executive Viv Beck - who had been prominent for a time but has recognised the inevitable and quit after highly publicised campaign debts and in-fighting.
It has taken Beck two weeks since she publicly promised to issue a statement correcting allegations over her campaign debts and negative strategy. But her exit should not be a surprise. A week ago, after the Newsroom-University of Auckland debate, she was equivocal when asked by Stuff's Todd Niall if she would pull the plug. "We’ll evaluate as we go along – I don’t know, the reality is I’m here."
That leaves Collins' main opponent as former Far North district mayor Wayne Brown, with last election's creditable third place-getter Craig Lord looking to be more than a spoiler.
Brown's challenge is that even when the centre-right cause has been relatively focused through one candidate, they have found it hard to turn the super city's demography (broadly the former Manukau and Waitakere council areas backing the left and Auckland City, the North Shore, Rodney and Franklin more divided).
So while it is now a starker game-on for Collins, he has advantages that he would be careless to let dissipate.
As voting papers go out on Friday for the three-week postal ballot, the two-term Auckland councillor sits on top of the polls. The next public poll is expected next Wednesday, September 21.
While Collins had 22 percent in the August Ratepayers' Alliance poll, with Brown not far back on 19, Beck was on 13, Lord on 7,and there was a handy 15 percent of the vote next to the name of Molloy before he pulled out.
Next week's poll might or might not have surveyed with Beck still in the field, but for Brown (and Lord, whose politics are more difficult to categorise) there is a healthy chunk of the vote up for grabs. Collins himself might pick up something of those poll segments, not on ideology but if there are those who have questions about Brown's temperament, age and own political history up north.
Beck's name will remain on the ballot paper, so even she might gather some residual, sentimental votes.
After six months on the road and endless candidate debates and public meetings, Collins needed to be building in confidence and asserting himself more obviously in these gatherings and in the positions he's taking publicly on what might earlier have been sensitive issues.
And he appears to have done so.
Labelled by Māori Affairs Minister Willie Jackson as a "smooth talker", Collins had appeared almost too calm and smooth in some phases of the campaign. A relatively undistinguished council CV, a measured tone verging on the bland, a polished and sometimes fence-sitting answer at the ready.
Lord and Brown rail against the council incumbency that Collins represents, trying to paint him as part of the problem not the solution.
The candidates had one of their biggest crowds (around 300) on Wednesday night at the big gymnasium that is the Barfoot & Thompson stadium at Kohimarama's Selwyn College.
Collins arrived late, and Brown left early, due to previously arranged campaign commitments, so they intersected for a shorter time than the crowd might have wished. The debate included Beck, Lord, and two other candidates in Ted Johnston (who managed 15,000 votes and 4.25 percent of the vote in 2019 in this contest) and Gary Brown.
Collins stands out. He's 194 cm (6 ft 3) tall and wears his white shirt untucked under a checked jacket, with dress jeans and camel-coloured shoes.
He strides on stage handshaking all the seated rivals and apologising for the commitment in west Auckland that delayed him.
This is Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei's home base and Collins receives cheers for his greeting in te reo. He gives his stump speech about standing for the future of his two young daughters, so they and this city can "prosper and flourish".
It's also the territory of the Ōrākei ward councillor Desley Simpson, who from the front row of the audience receives acknowledgements from Beck and Collins. The candidate tells a well-worn anecdote of having asked to move his seat at the council meeting room to be next to Simpson ("I'm from the lowest-income ward, she represents the highest income ward") to learn and share experiences.
"I've been able to make some clear decisions and get some understandings of what I might not have been able to do before," Collins says. "I think she's enjoyed sitting next to me as well."
Not letting any of the high-income Simpson electors in the audience miss his point, he goes on to describe his style of collaborative leadership as "someone who's prepared to walk over to somebody else and listen".
Kohimarama is also in the heart of the heavily National-voting Tāmaki parliamentary electorate, but Collins fronts his endorsement by both Labour and the Greens - "parties I know you all love".
He assures them of a "level of independence" and indulges in self-praise describing having voted against the regional fuel tax for Auckland, despite his side of politics favouring it to fund public and active transport initiatives. Collins saw it as regressive, burdening the less well-off with more and disproportionate costs.
As his speaking time is up, he is sufficiently confident to tease the audience that "I'm getting the impression that you want to hear more from me". There aren't obvious calls for more, but a relatable tone seemed set.
Collins was not, during his terms as a councillor, the obvious first among equals of the 20 representatives in that decision-making room. He's been scrutinised for his low-ish attendance at meetings, but can hit back with his efforts spent during the worst of the Covid pandemic working in the community rather than on Zoom calls.
He still speaks mush and jargon at times. But in debates he seems to be coming off some of the fences he chose to sat on in the past. At Kohimarama, he set aside his elaborate academic wordage about rates affordability ratios (that Wayne Brown had used to accuse him of seeking a way to bump up rates substantially) and simply committed to holding the general rate rise at 3.5 percent for the first year.
Brown told the crowd he would ensure councillors focused on "the numbers" and wouldn't be able to escape the financial implications of their decisions on people.
He raised the stakes on his allegations about cost overruns for the City Rail Link project, saying he feared the city and Government would be told it had blown out by $2 billion from its current $4.5 billion budget. "I'm particularly worried now by the CRL... They are not telling us the numbers."
After he had left, the candidates were asked about moving the port from downtown. Collins said a policy of Brown's of forcing the port company to pay $400m a year in dividends and other payments was misguided. "They are never going to pay that."
It was a shame, he quipped, that "Mr know-the-numbers" had had to depart. "This whole business of knowing the numbers is seriously important."
It was telling that Collins didn't jab at Beck or Lord or the others on stage. Brown is increasingly viewed by observers and players in the mayoral contest as being the one contender from the right who might amass enough support to take on Collins' starting advantages. When Viv Beck criticised Collins' fares-free public transport policy, and one of the other candidates noted her 'attack', Collins was cool but lightly dismissive: "No, Viv doesn't attack."
(When he was there, Brown showed some regard for Collins - less so for Lord or Beck - but on the campaign, he makes it clear that an untried incumbent isn't the answer that a "broken" Auckland Council needs.)
A question from the audience on Three Waters and co-governance was easy pickings for Beck ("No I don't support it, and don't support the co-governance that goes with it"), Gary Brown ("No Three Waters and no co-governance"), Lord ("I've been completely firm, I disagree completely with Three Waters. I disagree with any race-based policies") and Ted Johnston ("It's just an asset grab. Co-governance here is not acceptable at all").
It presented a more nuanced challenge for Collins. He pivoted quickly to the upside: "We want good safe drinking water and systems that work. I'm satisfied with the economies of scale that we will get some good benefits."
And he had a nod to community feedback he's picked up on governance (leaving aside the issue of "co" governance with tangata whenua), that Auckland would contribute 94 percent of the water assets in its zone and have just 28 percent of governance, which needed reconsideration.
Collins didn't duck co-governance, however, holding up the Auckland Council's Independent Māori Statutory Board, the Tūpuna Maunga Authority managing the city's volcanic cones, and the forum of co-management nearby at Ōrākei. "They are a form of co-governance. As an evolving society it's something we have got to consider."
His own evolution as a candidate showing more confidence in what he brings to the contest - and more appetite for confronting political risk - was on show this week when he issued a statement calling for a move to Māori wards on the council and its local boards by 2025, the next round of elections.
It pulled no punches. "It’s time our city embraced its distinctive bicultural relationship," he started, decrying noises through the campaign for setting the clock back on race and Treaty of Waitangi partnership.
"Our Māori identity is our point of difference in the world and iwi mana whenua, as traditional kaitiaki of our city, should have more influence in how the city develops, accommodates growth and meets the social, cultural, economic and environmental challenges ahead."
More influence.
Collins went further to say Māori deserve more than empty words on improving our Treaty partnership which is why he supports "Māori wards being in place by 2025 to increase elected Māori representation at the governing body and local boards".
And: “I will also support our Māori heritage and identity through the naming of council facilities, public roads, and public spaces such as parks that tell the story of our rich Māori culture.”
Collins has history, demographics and a splintered opposition field on his side. He could yet find that all those advantages fall away, as the final three weeks of campaigning loom. The splintered opposition just became less so.
But Collins is evidently not going to play it safe.
