Albert-Eden-Roskill spans the divide from the leafy streets of Epsom such as Mt Eden Rd (above) to gritty Owairaka. Photo / Sarah Ivey
Fletcher looks comfortable but battle shaping up between left-winger Casey and local board deputy chair Turnbull
Sprawled between two harbours, Albert-Eden-Roskill spans an economic and social divide from leafy Epsom to McGechan Close in Owairaka, branded in 2007 by then Opposition Leader John Key as "underclass" country.
So it was fitting that the ward of more than 160,000 Aucklanders stood with a foot in each camp in 2010 when it voted former National minister of the Crown Christine Fletcher and left-wing battler Cathy Casey into its two seats on the first Super City council.
Although Mrs Fletcher leads a shrunken Communities and Residents organisation hard-pressed to find enough local board candidates, she gained a majority of more than 5000 votes last time, and is assured of re-election after consolidating her Mt Eden stronghold under siege from intensification demands in the council's Unitary Plan rule-book.
That is despite victory claimed by Dr Casey's City Vision ward running mate, Albert-Eden Local Board chairman Peter Haynes, in winning a council commitment to keep terraced housing out of Mt Eden among other heritage village centres while accusing Mrs Fletcher of being absent from early planning sessions when that was achieved.
Mrs Fletcher insists that although she went overseas for a family wedding, she has worked solidly to oppose the Unitary Plan's presumption of high population growth while council organisations continue to base infrastructure provisioning on medium-growth projections.
But the ward's big contest is between Dr Casey, a criminologist, and 34-year-old community police constable Nigel Turnbull, whom C&R plucked from his political apprenticeship as deputy chair of the Mt Roskill's Puketapapa Local Board to join Mrs Fletcher.
That is being spiced up by a turning of tables from 2010, when a failed National Party electorate candidate split the centre-right by running against C&R, helping Dr Casey to beat former Auckland City Council member and now National list MP Paul Goldsmith by just under 600 votes.
This time, Greens breakaway Phil Chase is infuriating the centre-left by running for a ward seat as well as heading a four-member ticket on the Albert-Eden Local Board's Owairaka subdivision.
One seasoned left-wing observer believes Mr Chase is being "disingenuous" in claiming Dr Casey has sewn up her seat, and that he is no threat to her, although the pundit's money is still on her keeping her job as one of Auckland's hardest-working councillors.
"And you should never under-estimate the dog thing that Cathy is branded around - I'm surprised at the amount of Tories who vote for Cathy on that," he said, referring to her championing of pooch-owners' rights.
Dr Casey is circumspect about the Chase factor, though acknowledging she and Dr Haynes are trying to hammer home a message that Len Brown will be returned as mayor but "needs a good centre-left council".
Mrs Fletcher is promoting Mr Turnbull as a way of maintaining symmetry in "a very diverse ward", saying Mt Roskill - in which 51 per cent of residents were born overseas and the median household income of $58,300 is $11,000 below Albert-Eden's - needs representation.
She says Mr Turnbull, who has a Fijian wife and directorship through his police job of a major youth development project across the ward, is "right at the cutting edge of working within the community" while being aware through personal experience of difficulties facing young families scrimping for first-home deposits.
That advocacy doesn't wash with minority City Vision members of Mr Turnbull's Puketapapa board, the husband-and-wife team of Michael Wood and Julie Fairey, who cite his opposition with Mrs Fletcher to a "living wage" for council staff and refusal to rule out privatising the port and airport as showing a hard-line commitment to core right-wing values.
They say Mt Roskill suffered decades of neglect under C&R rule, although Mr Turnbull claims little changed when City Vision took over the Town Hall in the mid-2000s.
Intriguingly, it was C&R member Richard Barter who as Puketapapa board chairman used his casting vote to support a council investigation into the feasibility of a living wage.
Mr Barter, who says that was consistent with his work on poverty alleviation for an aid agency and that he has "never been told what to do by the C&R people", believes his board has achieved remarkable consensus on most other issues such as its promotion of measured rather than hasty redevelopment planning around the mined-out Three Kings Quarry.
Similarly, the board formed a united front with its Albert-Eden counterpart with help from councillors Casey and Fletcher to resist a push by Housing NZ last week for four-storey apartment blocks over a large section of flood-prone Owairaka, allegedly without local consultation.
But at election time, all bets are off, and City Vision under the Roskill Community Voice banner is battling hard for the upper hand on a raft of local issues such as burying high-voltage power lines - in a campaign resurrected by Roskill Labour MP Phil Goff, with whom Mr Wood works as electorate chairman - restoration of the Puketapapa and Big King volcanic cones, and running a railway line from Avondale to May Rd.
Those are all campaigns which the C&R team, down one candidate in the board election after a member's late withdrawal before nominations closed, is finding hard to resist.
Albert-Eden-Roskill profile
Ethnicity: European 51.1%, Asian 31.1%, Pasifika 10.5%, Maori 6%. Overseas-born 43.4%
Median age: 33
Median household income: $65,697
Current councillors: Cathy Casey and Christine Fletcher
Local Boards: Albert-Eden and Puketapapa.
Ward candidates (2 seats)
Cathy Casey (City Vision), Phil Chase (Liveable Communities), Christine Fletcher (C&R), Grace Haden (Transparency NZ), Peter Haynes (City Vision), Nigel Turnbull (C&R)
Local board candidates
Albert-Eden Local Board
Maungawhau subdivision (4 seats)
Bevan Chuang (C&R), Lee Corrick (C&R), Rohan Evans (City Vision), Peter Haynes (City Vision), Rachel Langton (C&R), Lisa Loveday (City Vision), Greg McKeown, Godfrey Rudolph (City Vision), Tim Woolfield (C&R)
Owairaka subdivision (4 seats)
Pauline Anderson (Focus Local - Independent), Helga Arlington (City Vision), Sheelah Chalklen (Liveable Communities), Phil Chase (Liveable Communities), Mark Donnelly (Focus Local - Independent), Graeme Easte (City Vision), Lisa Er (Liveable Communities), Glenda Fryer (City Vision), Rodger Jack (C&R), Gayatri Jaduram (Focus Local - Independent), Jeffrey Johnson (Conservative), Philip Nannestad (Liveable Communities), Monique Poirier (C&R), Sian Robertson (Mana Movement), Margi Watson (City Vision)
Puketapapa Local Board (6 seats)
Richard Barter (C&R), Harry Doig (Roskill Community Voice), Peter Eccles (Independent), Julie Fairey (Roskill Community Voice), David Holm (Roskill Community Voice), Garth Houltham (Roskill Community Voice), Shail Kaushal (Roskill Community Voice), Ella Kumar (C&R), Peter Muys (C&R), Darren Pigg, Joseph Rebello (Conservative), Hari Shankar, Paul Sommer (Conservative), Nigel Turnbull (C&R), Matt van Tuinen (C&R), Michael Wood (Roskill Community Voice)