City in Labour ‘B
As the election looms on September 23, Alister Browne looks at how Palmerston North has fared at the polls over the past half century.
ugger the pollsters,’’ Jim Bolger memorably quipped on election night 1993 as the National Party was returned to power with an unexpectedly small margin of victory.
It was an echo of David Lange, who had a crack at the ‘‘poll-driven fruitcakes’’ who were sucking so much of the oxygen out of the political air.
Annette King recycled Bolger in 2011 when she was Labour’s deputy leader and her party was tanking in the polls.
So, what does all this mean for Palmerston North this election as ‘‘shock’’ polls once more splash across the news?
We’ll find out on election night, because then we’ll learn whether the Jacinda Ardern ‘‘effect’’ is real, or a product of the fevered imaginings of the Wellington chattering class.
The result should show whether Labour will once more trail National in the party vote in Palmerston North and whether the city’s incumbent MP, Labour’s Iain Lees-galloway, builds on the dented personal majority he currently holds.
In the 2014 election, Leesgalloway amassed a lowered majority of 2000-plus in the face of the significant name recognition ex-mayor Jono Naylor brought to the table for National, but which will be missing this time.
That’s because National seems to have reverted to type and parachuted an outsider into Palmerston North despite the history, which is crystal clear on what Palmerston North voters think of that – not much. Palmerston North for a time was rated a bellwether seat by some political analysts because so many of its key socio-economic indicators sat in the ‘‘average’’ bracket – unemployment figures, Maori population, benefit numbers, pay rates, age groups, education attainment, that kind of thing.
But it only takes a cursory look at history again to shoot that down. Since Labour’s Joe Walding won the city in a by-election in 1967, National has held it for a solitary three-year term, when John Lithgow captured it on the coat-tails of the Rob Muldoon-led tidal wave that engulfed the country in 1975.
After that, Walding won it back in 1978 and politics as usual resumed for the city as Labour continued to dominate up to the present day. It was indeed the proverbial hiccup that disturbed but did not seriously hurt Labour’s hegemony.
Not that National didn’t occasionally see sense and persuade a prominent local to have a go at prising Palmerston North out of Labour’s grip.
And there was even a period, when the heavily Labour-leaning western suburbs of Cloverlea, Milson and Kelvin Grove were carved out of the electorate through boundary changes, when things looked promising for National almost regardless of where its candidate came from.
But it didn’t happen, although National has came tantalisingly close on occasions over the past 50 years.
In the by-election of 1967, for instance, National’s Gordon Cruden, an effective city councillor and public speaker, came within a whisker of winning – both he and Walding epitomised the networking that is a feature of success in provincial politics.
Rotary, local bodies, Chamber of Commerce, professional associations, unions, sports bodies – these were the kinds of sinews that typically gave muscle to the impetus of budding politicians seeking higher office.
Cruden again ran Walding close in the general election of 1969, but in 1972, when Labour’s Norm Kirk emphatically captured Wellington, Cruden was nowhere to be seen. National fielded a lesser-known candidate and Walding romped home.
The election of 1981, which was
We’ll find out on election night, because then we’ll learn whether the Jacinda Ardern ‘‘effect’’ is real, or a product of the fevered imaginings of the Wellington chattering class.
Muldoon’s last hurrah, was a classic slugfest in Palmerston North between long-time mayor Brian Elwood and Labour city councillor Trevor de Cleene, both lawyers. Voters took de Cleene’s campaign slogan ‘‘Elwood for mayor, de Cleene for MP’’ to heart and duly sent the Labour man back to Parliament.
Labour then maintained its grip on the city down the ensuing years, pretty much regardless of what happened elsewhere.
During National’s lengthy tenure in office between 1990-1999, for example, Labour’s Steve Maharey racked up an impressive four wins plus two more in 2002 and 2005.
Palmerston North became the only Labour-held provincial urban centre in the country as National swept the land in successive elections after Helen Clark left office.
With that kind of record it is hard to see Labour doing anything but better this election in the city, ‘‘Ardern effect’’ or not.