Peddling hard behind the soapboxes

By JULIE MIDDLETON


Campaign managers are the masterminds behind politicians' pitches for votes - but to the public, they are largely anonymous figures. And that's the way it should be, says political veteran Brian Nicolle, who is again overseeing John Banks' run for the Auckland mayoralty.

"Campaign managers should not be heard, nor seen," says Mr Nicolle, the Act Party's campaign organiser, who describes himself as "not a limelight person" and who rarely speaks to journalists.

But he gave a rare interview to the Herald the day before news broke about the distribution in Auckland of a four-page reprint of National Business Review stories highly critical of mayoral aspirant Dick Hubbard, who was well ahead of John Banks in a recent Herald-DigiPoll survey.

One of the NBR stories, not reprinted in the leaflet, is now the subject of a defamation claim brought by Mr Hubbard.

Mr Nicolle ran his first political campaign in 1984 for Phil Goff, now Foreign Affairs Minister. Mr Nicolle has been described as "perhaps the equivalent of a rock star in the campaign manager world", by Hobson community board member Aaron Bhatnagar.

Roger Wilson, a campaign expert who spent 10 years working for Greenpeace at its Netherlands headquarters, volunteered to manage former mayor Christine Fletcher's tilt for office.

Cereal king Dick Hubbard doesn't have a campaign manager. But freelance public relations consultant Belinda Abernethy, who has done Hubbard Foods' PR for eight years, is advising him on communications.

Mr Hubbard's election crew is "a very lean and mean team," she says. "Dick writes many of his speeches. He wrote all the Herald ads [in which he outlined his policies] himself".

Long-time Manukau Mayor Barry Curtis is also running his own campaign, using Auckland's Stix Communications to write and distribute press releases.

One of Curtis' two major challengers, Dick Quax, is part of the People's Choice ticket, which has a part-time campaign chairman in Hamish Stevens, the chief financial officer of DB Breweries.

However, Quax, an Act Party candidate in 1999 and 2002, is also getting informal advice from Mr Nicolle.

The other major Curtis challenger, Len Brown, runs his own campaign with the help of 15 volunteers, some of whom head up "ward teams".

Another big name in political campaigning, former National Party chairman John Slater, is managing the Citizens and Ratepayers Now campaign. It has 69 candidates across the Auckland region's community boards, councils, licensing trusts and health boards.

Campaign managers need to be energetic, fleet-footed, political all-rounders who can handle multiple tasks, says Alliance Party leader Matt McCarten, who managed Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia's successful byelection campaign for Te Tai Hauauru.

Every campaign is different, he says, but managers make final decisions about how they will unfurl and then drive them on a day-to-day basis, from lodging nomination forms with electoral offices to advising candidates, monitoring public and media opinion, and managing volunteers.

Campaign managers also have the final say, not the candidate: the latter's job is to build profile and spread the campaign message.

Good managers "are hard to find," says Mr McCarten.

"It's a very small school. In my experience as a party worker, candidates are easier to get than managers."

Mr Nicolle is working full-time on the Banks campaign, starting at 5am every morning by scanning local internet news.

Managers "have to be ready to react - and sometimes not react. You've got to use judgment and allow yourself not to be emotional about things."

Banks is "one of the best candidates I've ever had ... He does what he's told, often."

McCarten says campaign managers are rated by "the look of a campaign, the mood of a campaign, and the angle of stories".

But it's not necessarily a money-spinning job. Mr Nicolle is employed by Mr Banks until October 9, the day votes are tallied.

Mr Wilson, who works as a mediator, is managing Mrs Fletcher's campaign on a part-time voluntary basis: "because I believe in what Christine Fletcher is standing for".

"That's the only reason I could do it."