Into the valley of electoral death

By AUDREY YOUNG

With one sentence last Saturday night, a defeated Bill English subconsciously distanced himself from the failed National Party campaign. "This is now the party of Bill English and it's going to succeed again."

The subtext was: if it hadn't been his party before, it couldn't have been his campaign.

Of course he has been at pains to claim responsibility for the dismal 21 per cent result last Saturday, the party's worst. He is possessive about the responsibility and it is working in his favour.

The more he takes responsibility, the less he is blamed. There is a ready-made villain in president Michelle Boag, playing perfectly to character by dragging out her resignation.

English is almost seen as a victim. He even received a standing ovation this week at the Local Government New Zealand conference in Rotorua - before he had spoken.

Drained from tough decisions on Thursday night about staff cuts in his office, he could barely explain such a reaction. Something about one politician's sympathy for another.

No one will talk about it, but everyone knows Michelle Boag will resign as president within weeks and he will have a fresh start. Some will say it is unfair that Boag has to go because she did not run the campaign.

Therein lies the problem. Nobody ran it. At the time when her highly developed sense of self and bossiness might have been valuable, Boag deferred to a campaign strategy committee.

The campaign strategy committee, which was set up under Jenny Shipley's leadership, met weekly at Parliament until the election campaign. Public speculation of an early election began in earnest in March after the Alliance split, but the talk was not met with contingency plans.

One insider described the result as inevitable: "It was like watching a jumbo jet heading towards a mountain in slow motion."

Membership was by invitation only. Defeated list MP Annabel Young makes no secret of her resentment.

"We had a strategy committee that was having secret meetings for 18 months. They were very self-important meetings. I walked into the meetings occasionally and people just stopped talking and turned and looked at me until I left.

"A person who went to the meetings said there were plunger pots of coffee on the table, everyone was striding around the room going 'F***! f***! f***! where's my coffee, I need a cigarette,' but no one was actually doing any work.

"With an environment that looks like something out of Ally McBeal but without the good looks, no wonder they came up with a crappy strategy."

The strategy, as she saw it, was to concentrate on winning the constituency vote, rather than the party vote or a two-ticks campaign. "We ignored the list vote and, funnily enough, having really not asked for the list vote, people didn't give it to us."

The campaign is widely seen as Boag's failure because she raised expectations. She ran a stunning campaign to oust John Slater last year and over-promised.

"The president must lead," she told the party conference. "The president must fundraise. The president must plan and strategise. The president must communicate. And the president must inspire and give confidence not just to the organisation but to the parliamentary team ...

"We're going to do one important thing: we're going to state clearly and absolutely what the National Party stands for and we're going to make sure everyone knows about it. Campaigning, communications and fundraising is what I do best."

That was the promise. What was delivered was a bland campaign, or a "gutless" campaign as one source put it, in which there was little to distinguish the party.

The caucus had performed poorly as an Opposition until Paintergate and the Alliance issues presented themselves. Important policy had not been bedded down. Education, for example, was a key element of its election attack but education policy was not released until a week before the campaign.

Underlying the campaign was a sense of disunity accumulated through events associated with Boag: the presidential contest, forced retirements of MPs, de-selections, demotions on the list, and the "suicide-bomber" in the party who complained to the Serious Fraud Office about a donation in 1996 involving Boag's former employers.

The party had been polling about 30 per cent and rising. After the complaint it dived about four points and then sank further. The complaint was not dismissed until long after the damage was done.

Boag had faithfully kept her promise to raise funds, which English spelled out to MPs at caucus on Tuesday when the Boag-bashing started.

She inherited a $300,000 debt and raised $1.2 million in less than a year. Campaign spending was between $900,000 and $1 million, not nearly enough for a high-visibility campaign for television, newspapers, billboards, direct mailing and leafletting.

Much of it went on television ads and two glossy magazines inserted into a newspaper. There wasn't much change left over.

There was one other thing Michelle Boag was greatly admired for during the campaign: her muffin-making skills. At 7am every day, the committee would meet in the war room along the corridor from English's parliamentary office. And every morning the dedicated president would have been up early enough to welcome them all with a tray of steaming muffins, banana some days, blueberry others.

Deputy leader Roger Sowry was usually there. East Coast Bays MP and strategist Murray McCully was on the committee. Rangitikei MP and first-term star Simon Power was invited on when Jenny Shipley was the leader. McCully and Power and English were often hooked up by telephone conference calls during the campaign.

The party's director-general and details man, Allan Johnston, was officially designated campaign director, though his was a logistical role, not strategic. No one believed for a second that he directed the campaign.

English's adviser Tim Grafton was on the committee. The former journalist and press secretary turned public relations consultant worked for many years with Sue Wood, former president and unsuccessful list candidate.

Grafton had been appointed by Jenny Shipley but was kept on by English after last October's leadership change. His title is director of strategy though his forte is seen as policy oversight.

Tina Symmans had originally been on the committee as National's communications director, being appointed shortly after Boag won the presidency a year ago.

At the end of May, before the election was called, family illness forced her virtual retirement from the campaign. Some say her absence was crucial, because she was responsible for the integrated package.

English and his press secretary, Sue Foley, were on the committee. But he is so sensitive about being seen to be divorcing himself from the committee, he refused to confirm the logical assumption that he might have had to participate by telephone conference in most of the meetings during the campaign.

"Look, I am the leader and I've got to take responsibility. And I am not going to look like I'm setting out to divorce myself from anything that was done. Because I'm not divorcing myself from it."

There were some major arguments on the committee. Tina Symmans hired an advertising executive without consulting the committee, which caused ill-feeling, but the election was announced soon afterwards so there were other things to argue about.

There was a debate over whether the best use of the television budget was in expensive ads introducing the relatively unknown English or for more frequent but cheaper ads with hard messages about how National was different. The case for the former won the day. English changed his mind half-way through and ordered the latter.

The quality was not always good, and it got worse. His closing television address looked as if he was at his own funeral. Worse, the picture and the sound were out of sync. National was outclassed that night by everyone, including the Outdoor Recreation Party.

There was also debate about how much should be made of National's record of economic management. This, too, wasn't really resolved and by the time the Don-Brash-drinking-coffee ads appeared, it was too little, too soft and too late.

The campaign committee failed to give the advertising company a brief and so the ads, not surprisingly, were scripted without reference to the committee.

But the failure to push the party vote is the most widely criticised aspect of the campaign. Most electorate hoardings - and there weren't many - emphasised the electorate vote, which has no impact on the party vote except possibly to reduce it if the voting public is in a vote-splitting mood.

The electorate emphasis was part of English's insistence that MPs had to "reconnect" with communities and become respected representatives as an antidote to the 1990s image of arrogant, knows-better National.

"You can argue whether it overshot or not," English said. "You pick up any one facet of a campaign and say this was the wrong thing to do.

"You could argue that Labour running billboards of Helen Clark didn't help them."

Labour's party polling dropped by more points than did National's during the campaign.

"The important thing here is whether you regard voters' actions seriously or regard them as some kind of temporary whim. I don't regard them as a whim.

"There's no one factor you can say pushed voters to vote how they did. I don't think they vote because of your billboard. I don't think they vote because of your president. I don't think they vote because your pamphlet has the wrong colour around the edge. But all of those things can accumulate."

It is likely that, with a superb campaign, National might have done a bit better. "But you'll never know."

In some electorates such as Nelson, where a significant amount of money was spent on the party vote during the campaign, the result was no better.

English agrees that good campaigns run by Act and the Greens resulted in his party standing still.

The whispering about the campaign committee has begun. Boag's head may not be enough and the unpopular Sowry may not survive as deputy leader.

There have also been calls for McCully' s demotion - Young dismisses him as a campaigner, saying he has "lost" three election campaigns for National and "he has got his own safe seat down to a majority of 1400".

Others say McCully made himself unpopular on the committee with regular whining criticisms about poor decisions.

McCully says he stands by all the advice he gave and he is willing to have it tested with the benefit of hindsight - a reference to the internal campaign review being conducted by National.

And English says it is important to keep perspective when raking over the campaign. "You can pick out any element and say 'that wasn't right'. When you've got 21 per cent, there is almost nothing you can argue was done well."

There will be no excuses next time. It is his party now.

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