KEY POINTS:
Who'd want to be in Alex Swney's predicament? The 7.2 per cent support he's scored in the Weekend Herald Digipoll in the Auckland City mayoral race has him running a bad third, to former mayor John Banks on 43.7 per cent and sitting mayor Dick Hubbard on 35.2 per cent.
Yet if he throws in the towel at this late stage, he risks delivering much of his support into the hands of the candidate he says he's trying to save Auckland from - John Banks.
On Friday, Mr Swney rather desperately called the poll result a wake-up call. New Zealand would never re-elect Muldoon. Why would Auckland go back to Banks? To underline his point, he began distributing 100 copies of Noel Harrison's unflattering 2004 biography of the one-time National MP, Banks - Behind the Mask.
In a simple world, the strategic choice for him would have been to retire from the hunt and appeal to his supporters to back the better of two evils.
The catch is, as chief executive of Heart of the City, the central city business lobby group, much of Mr Swney's support comes from the right. And however wary these seriously wealthy denizens of the Eastern Suburbs might be of Mr Banks, there's no way they're going to cast their lot with cereal millionaire Dick Hubbard, who, for the last three years, has played footsie with a leftish controlled council.
To add to Mr Swney's discomfort, he's also attracted some support from liberal urbanites like himself, who joined the Hubbard band-wagon three years ago to see off Mr Banks, but can't bring themselves to back either of the former mayors this time round.
Three years ago, there was a similar flurry after the pre-election Herald Digipoll about what third-runner Christine Fletcher should do with her 9.6 per cent support, to say nothing of Bruce Hucker's 3.4 per cent.
Dr Hucker eventually pulled out, but Mrs Fletcher stayed in. In the end, she got swept aside by the Hubbard landslide, and the victor improved on the opinion poll results.
As I argued then, this battle of the show ponies for the mayoral crown highlights what a flawed institution the mayoralty is.
Every three years we have an ever expanding clutch of candidates strutting the hustings promising to lead us out of the wilderness into world-class glory.
Cliche-filled visions tumble from their lips and if recent history is anything to go by, in Auckland City at least, we give them three years then spit them out for something new.
The flaw in the system is that it's designed to fail. We expect our mayoral candidates to promise the Earth, but give the mayor just one vote on the council, which makes decisions.
Mayor Hubbard was delivered that lesson early in his mayoralty when his deputy, then City Vision leader Bruce Hucker, was quick to put him in his place of one.
Mr Hubbard eventually discovered that trying to get a majority for his programmes was like herding cats.
We still don't know what the terms of reference for the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance are going to be, but there should be some focus on the present dysfunctionality of electing mayors at large, while councils are elected on a ward basis.
The system delivers up neutered leaders who often end up leading little except the procession to the monthly council meeting.
Particularly with much talk of a single Auckland council of some sort, it seems common sense that among the reforms is one that ensures the city leader has the backing and confidence of the political majority running the city.
An obvious solution is the parliamentary model, where the mayor or council chairman is elected by councillors from among their own membership.
Presumably that would be the leader of the strongest faction. It's what happens at the Auckland Regional Council. Such a reform would bring a touch of reality into civic politics.
Instead of elections centred on a three-yearly mayoral beauty contest, focus might go back on policy issues.
As for potential mayors, well, they would have had to prove their leadership abilities by herding their own party of cats to victory.
