Party time: Bitter scrap on genteel Shore

By JULIE MIDDLETON

They're neck-and-neck heading towards the finish line in marginal Northcote, and the mud is flying.

National candidate Jeremy Sole says the sitting MP, Labour's Ann Hartley, is "toast".

"I know I'm beating her because of the response I'm getting."

His website sails perilously close to defamation in querying Hartley's ethics and integrity.

Hartley, a former North Shore mayor, does not deign to comment on Sole, beyond saying "it's not the sort of politics I want to engage in".

This is despite the fact that she flung the dung first. Hartley, who lifted the long-time National seat in 1999 with a 278-vote majority, told reporters that the Friedman Group NZ, a company Sole managed, went into liquidation the day after his selection.

The National candidate says his departure from the overseas-run company just sealed a foreseen fate.

The two do not speak, even when "human hoarding" on rush-hour Onewa Rd puts them side-by-side.

On the second-to-last day before the polls, the petite Hartley - whose car reads "Ann can" - wears an occasional frown as she scurries with an aide around shopping centres in Northcote, Marlborough and Hillcrest asking "Are you voting on Saturday?" and handing out leaflets, including a Mandarin edition.

Although her list ranking - 35 - is expected to push her to Parliament, she is desperate to hang on to Northcote. It's a puddle of red in a sea of National seats north of the Harbour Bridge.

The avuncular, red-headed Sole strolls around Highbury and Glenfield chatting to shoppers, cosily hand-in-hand with teacher wife Fiona - they met when she sold him a raffle ticket at a National Party do five years ago.

Next step Wellington, of course. "There isn't a plan B," Sole says later.

But both candidates have time for a little personal shopping while they trawl the streets.

Hartley buys a Lotto ticket. Sole gets a couple of rolls of film to use on Saturday night.

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