Tuesday, January 11, 2005

The Good Fight

Our earnest little campaign in Pakuranga commences this month.

After 2 good campaigns in 1999 and 2002, we have made some real gains, and at that last election (for the first time) we received the largest share of the Party vote. Our goal this time is to build on that, and make further inroads into Maurice Williamsons 4500 vote personal majority.

The last campaign was a funny one, with Maurice (at the time extremely grumpy with his leader BillEnglish) campaigning purely for the candidate vote, and ACT throwing real resources into the electorate in an attempt to really push the Party vote (it is their 4th highest polling seat). In the middle of this melee our dedicated crew was the only one to run a genuine 'two tick' campaign, and actually get stuck into the hard work of door knocking, holding stalls at the local shops, and that sort of old fashioned nuts and bolts campaigning.

People responded, and Pakuranga actually backed Labour, and put me as a Labour candidate as close as we've ever got to the incumbent.

We have the resources, people, and most importantly time (it was a short campaign in 2002) to expand on that effort this time, and with all of this there should be some real gains to be made. We'll be running an escalating campaign that will begin this month, and steadily build in terms of range of activities and intensity.

The leafletting and meeting & greeting starts next week!

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