Party time: Left, left, left, left ... right!

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Clem Simich - tall, balding, impassive, dressed in funereal black from head to toe - is slowly pacing.

It's his policeman's gait, habit of a past life, swinging, controlled, wearing straight furrows into the carpet in a St Heliers hall.

It's 9.15pm, and chilly. Simich, the three-term defending Tamaki MP, rarely stops moving, and doesn't sit. His lips are clamped into a line.

Eighteen supporters - middle-aged and white, draped in sensible tracksuits and jerseys - mill uncertainly under harsh strip lighting, clutching beer and wine, nibbling crackers and cheese.

Simich's hands are empty; they often disappear into his pockets. His eyes roam over two flickering TV sets.

His wife, former model Ann, shivers outside, sucking nervously on her first cigarette for six years. Old New Year's resolution just sacrificed, she confesses.

Daughter Simone and son Ricardo light up too.

No one dares say it. National is flatlining. And at 9.25pm, with 55 per cent of Tamaki's votes in, comes the unthinkable. Simich is trailing Labour's Laila Boyle by 930.

He remains police-officer inscrutable: "I'm never highly overjoyed, and never downhearted."

Simich learns from the Herald that website results are quicker than TV, but there's no way to hook up a laptop.

Simone, as unguarded as her dad is reserved, calls a web-head friend who spends the next hour phoning back every few minutes.

Ann replays: "Sixty-five per cent, and you're 280 behind."

"Well, that's as good as 280 ahead," says Simich, dismissively. "It's not relevant."

He uses his car key to clean out the bowl of his pipe, refills and lights it.

At 9.50pm, with 83 per cent in, the gap starts widening. Simich 7307, Boyle 6955.

Act's Ken Shirley has taken 3041 votes and has seriously split the right vote.

Simich mutters that Act, whose members he describes as "the dogs", have "taken a lot more than I thought they would".



Simich could now relax - "people have not let me down and they won't" - but admits he is "not happy at all! I'm never happy to see our party polling so low."

By 10.20pm, everyone is clustered around the two TVs, watching in resigned silence as Bill English concedes.

Someone breaks the hush. "Why is it that opposition leaders do their best speeches when they concede?"

The reply is swift and arch: "Because it's the time spin doctors don't have any say."

Final results show that Simich's majority has been slashed to 1188 from last election's 4911. Supporters briefly clap and cheer, and Simich flashes a swift smile as prelude to his thank-you speech. These are moments curiously short of exuberance.

Party spirit is also lacking elsewhere. At 11.20pm, the only sign of life at the Epsom address where supporters had gathered to support National's Richard Worth, returned for a second term, is his gargantuan face on a billboard.

A phone call reveals that the party's over. He's back home in Remuera's Victoria Ave, having a glass of champagne with his wife.

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