It's Monday afternoon and Stuart Nash is getting nods and murmurs of approval from the crowd at Ahuriri's Princess Alexandra retirement village by talking about the high price of meat and milk.
Labour's candidate for the Napier seat is telling the grey-haired audience about a recent meal he had with his great aunt where they discussed the sky-rocketing cost of a lamb roast which used to be "the dinner of poor people".
The same goes for the price of milk, he says, and this leads on to a diatribe about the "working poor" - the toilers of society who should be able to put food on their families' tables "and at the end of the week have a beer and go to the movies".
The crowd gathered in the rest home's atrium are polite and generally supportive of what Mr Nash is telling them.
Question time starts with a query about the cost of doctors visits, opening the door for Mr Nash to climb into one of his hot-button issues during the campaign: threatened cuts to Napier's health services with the proposed overnight closure of the city's after-hours medical centre.
"Napier needs 24-7 healthcare. That's something we'll go very hard on - even if it involves marching in the street, and I suspect it might come to that," he says.
On the need to boost Hawke's Bay's economy through an enhanced focus on regional development, Mr Nash says: "If I'm ever fortunate enough to be in cabinet, that's one portfolio I would love to have. And Hawke's Bay would do very well. Not that this is pork barrel politics."
Politics - pork barrel and every other kind - runs deep in Mr Nash's veins.
The great-grandson of former Prime Minister Sir Walter Nash has the pedigree, the experience, and - if he says so himself - the drive and passion for a second stint as an MP.
He was a locally-based list MP from 2008 to 2011, taking a big chunk of votes off National's Napier MP Chris Tremain at the last election, but not enough to win the seat.
After that loss he worked briefly in Wellington as chief of staff to then Labour leader David Shearer, but returned to Napier in early 2012, shortly after the birth of his first child, saying he wanted to be closer to his family and to start work on the current bid to win the electorate seat.
His two and a half year campaign to win Napier has been well resourced through vigorous fund-raising. His efforts have won him praise not just from his own side of the political fence, but even from right-wing commentator Matthew Hooton, who sees him as a future Labour leader.
Mr Nash says he has never worked as hard as he did when in Parliament - a job he says took up 80 to 100 hours a week.
"I'm not complaining because I'm coming back for more. I love it," he says.
But the apparent obsessive commitment raises concerns from at least one member of the Princess Alexandra audience.
"I protest. If you get back in - and I hope you do - you have to make sure you look after yourself," the man tells the aspiring MP. Mr Nash promises the man that he will take care of himself, and it's one commitment from an aspiring politician that seems believable.
This is a campaigner who has shown a long-term strategic approach that is all about surviving and thriving in the hard world of politics. Taking care of himself, politically, must almost come as second nature.