Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The man at the bottom of the list

The Waikato Times reports (not online) kindly but amusingly about the lowest-polling candidate in the recent local body elections. Take it away, Bruce Holloway:
Democracy can be a cruel business when you are at the bottom of the heap. Take the case of Te Kuiti’s Percy Malcolm Ern­est Growden, the most unsuccessful candidate in the greater Waikato region.
The unemployed beneficiary topped the poll for being the candidate to attract the least number of votes, with a mere 49 residents seeing him as the answer to the political challenges of Waitomo District Council’s Te Kuiti urban ward. [. . .]
Not only did Mr Growden almost totally fail to connect with the electorate, but he was also arguably the most uninformed candidate. Until contacted by the Waikato Times on Monday he was not even aware he had utterly failed in his bid to capture one of three ward vacancies. “Nobody rang to tell me,” he said. “And it hasn’t come out in the paper here, so I don’t really know how I did.”
But Mr Growden took defeat on the chin, saying it looked like just friends and family had voted for him. “I thought I might have got a bit more, but without a candidate photo it was always going to be tough.”
He could not afford to have a passport photo printed.
He declined to rate his performance out on the electoral stump, saying he did not attend meetings. “I’m not much of a public speaker.” [. . .]
Mr Growden’s political ambitions remain unbowed by this minor setback. “I might do it again in three years’ time,” he said.

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