Let’s start from the beginning

Ah local body elections! What fun they are. In 2007 the Waiheke Community Board consisted of;

Ray Ericson

Eileen Evans

Tony Sears

Herb Romaniuk

Kelly-Ann Harvey

All five had had a good previous term. Had they all stood for re-election there would have been little doubt that all of them would have remained incumbent. But Kelly-Ann chose to stand down leaving her seat on the board up for grabs.

Enter The New Candidates. You can see how they did here;

http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/members/elections/results2007.asp

As expected, the four incumbents were safely returned to office but with a new face at the table. Nobilangelo Ceramalus, (Pronounced Who-Gives-A-Damn) took the vacant seat with a 120 vote lead on Clayton Skidmore-Weir and became our newest local representative.

Nobble-Angelo, whose views on pretty much EVERYTHING can be found here;

http://waihekenotes.blogspot.com/

is a somewhat forthright chap. His frequent letters to the papers had shown a rather stern religious tenor but had been toned down considerably once he decided to run for public office. His Sunday morning evangelical meetings at the MORRA Hall were the stuff of legend and if you can find any former members of his rather exclusive congregation you may be sure they have interesting tales to tell.

But enough of that. By 2007 the hard-line ‘God Stuff’ had all but vanished from his public pronouncements and now we faced the New Nobble-Angelo, highly motivated, busy as all get out and clearly determined to campaign until he won.

Which he did. With a final vote tally of 1,098. Of course it helped that both the Gulf News and the Waiheke Marketplace clearly felt that asking anything even remotely resembling difficult questions was not their style and Nobble-Angelo got a free soap box for the duration of his campaign with the Gulf News willing to indulge him with as many as two letters printed per week. (More on Nobble-Angelo and the Media in a later post.)

Our one public meeting of the campaign was organised by Grey Power who shared the media’s distaste for unhindered discourse and flatly refused to allow any questions from the floor. Each candidate was given four or five minutes to state their positions and that was that. Freed from any need to answer a lot of impertinent questions from the rabble Nobble-Angelo did well, speaking clearly and concisely and easily outclassing the rest of the field. His populist anti-Auckland City stance went down well.

In general campaigning he was likewise successful. Armed with bundles of leaflets and sporting the dashing nasal sticking plaster that has become his unusual trademark, Nobble-Angelo was everywhere at once. On the ferries, outside Woolworths, at the Ostend Market….You couldn’t get away from him.

Once elected, he wasted no time in attempting to make his mark.

Thus; http://www.waihekegulfnews.co.nz/other-news/thames-coromandel-defection-bombshell.html

Whether he had actually mentioned this plan during the campaign remains a moot point and one to which we shall of course be returning frequently. But now he was on the board it was time to shake things up. Goodbye Auckland City and hello Thames-Coromandel and to hell with the logistical problems.

His petitioning followed the same format as his election campaign. Get out there and get in people’s way. Not everyone liked it of course;

http://www.waihekegulfnews.co.nz/other-news/defection-petition-draws-trespass-notice.html

I myself complained at Woolworths. It just seemed the right thing to do at the time.

And so the scene was set.