OPINION
Which councillors will incoming Auckland mayor Wayne Brown gather round him?
He has 20 to choose from, including 13 returning from the previous council and one who won his seat back after losing it in 2019.
He has a transition team largely comprised of backroom political operatives from the National Party. That implies a highly partisan approach.
But most if not all councillors will be telling Brown this week they want to work with him, not against him. Brown himself has said much the same.
He met with six of them on Tuesday and said in a statement afterwards:
"I'm very impressed with the calibre and insights of the councillors I have met today, and want to ensure all of them have meaningful and challenging roles, with real decision-making powers and associated accountabilities."
By early next week, he says, he'll have had a one-on-one with all the councillors.
What will those meaningful and challenging roles be?
Brown has a clear mandate to govern, and it's fair to say that mandate centres on a promise to be "laser-like" in his control of spending.
But aside from "fixing" Auckland, especially Auckland Transport, he hasn't announced any policy.
That makes it hard to know who he wants in what jobs.
He hasn't announced what council committees he wants to keep or establish, either.
During the campaign he mused publicly about not having any committees, although if he does that he'll be throwing an enormous burden of work back on himself.
The mayor has a lot to weigh.
Tuesday's niceties aside, Brown has expressed admiration for only one councillor: Desley Simpson, outgoing chair of the finance and performance committee.
Simpson can probably pick her own job and is known to be seeking a fresh challenge.
She's deeply committed to keeping the council as functional as possible, so will want an influential role. It'll be a major surprise if she doesn't become Brown's deputy.
But it's not a slam dunk. Simpson, a National Party member, was a loyal financial czar to mayor Phil Goff, who was Labour, but skilfully avoided supporting several of his other policies.
As deputy, she might be expected to be loyal on almost everything.
Already, it's clear that could be problematic. She will not be impressed by the fight Brown has picked with Eke Panuku chair Paul Majurey.
If she doesn't want the job, Brown may be tempted to think laterally.
With his own focus "laser-like" on spending, he may want a deputy who complements him by fulfilling some of the other roles of the mayor, notably connecting the council to local communities.
That brings Josephine Bartley into the picture.
Bartley is a highly respected community champion, a Labour Party member, former local board chair and outgoing deputy chair of the planning committee.
She's the left-field candidate, for sure. But Brown wants to raise the status of local boards and she could help him do that. If he wants to present a united and balanced leadership team, she'll be in the running.
Christine Fletcher may also fancy herself in this role. She's a former mayor of Auckland City, a long-serving councillor and a former minister in Jim Bolger's Government in the 1990s.
She will argue she knows how everything works, who to trust and not trust, and would be an invaluable guide for the newbie mayor.
Unfortunately for her, not many others see her that way.
Fletcher lacks support, either among other councillors or in the National Party, and Brown's advisers will have told him that.
Also, it won't have helped that she was John Tamihere's running mate in his 2019 bid to become mayor.
It doesn't seem tenable for Simpson to stay in a finance role. For all that Brown respects her, he also believes spending is a mess.
That should mean he wants a new broom to sweep things clean.
The job is likely to go to the effervescently bristly Maurice Williamson, who served in John Key's Government as minister for small business and building and construction, among other roles.
He's new to council but an old hand politically and says the only reason he stood is to sort out the finances.
Independent centre-left councillor Chris Darby is the outgoing chair of this committee and could be the big loser under Brown.
He's a policy wonk who also has the best strategic planning brain around the council table, but as planning czar he had responsibility for transport.
Because of that, Brown is unlikely to want him close.
The leading candidate to replace him is probably Daniel Newman, a smart and experienced councillor and National member, who was on the outer with Goff.
Brown could create a separate transport committee, to strengthen council control of Auckland Transport, and put Mike Lee in the chair.
Lee is a heritage trams aficionado who has just returned to council, and before the Supercity he was chair of the Auckland Regional Authority.
Like Brown, he favours heavy rail over light rail and thinks council is a monstrous mess.
He's also an old-fashioned lefty who now finds himself more comfortable consorting with the centre-right.
Brown will probably re-establish the two councillor seats on the AT board and offer them to the councillors who used to sit in them: Lee and Fletcher.
Both are itching to get them back.
Goff turned the environment committee into one of the council's main bodies, adding climate change to its title.
Brown might reduce its status again, but he's not opposed to climate action, in principle, and might ask Richard Hills to stay on in the chair.
Hills is one of six Labour Party members now on council and is close to the party leadership. He'd be a valuable link to the Government and to a bloc of votes at the council table.
Labour's Alf Filipaina has been on council from the start and will want a role that respects his elder status. Angela Dalton, independent centre-left, was impressively competent in the last council and should be due something solid.
John Watson will be hoping for some serious responsibility, too. He's talented and hard working but last term he chose to turn himself into the ghost of Mike Lee, railing from the left against everything Goff did.
Brown will admire the way Watson stood up to Goff, but it's not clear what he'll do with him.
It's likely Brown will create an inner circle of Desley Simpson, Maurice Williamson, Daniel Newman and the now right-leaning Mike Lee. But if he chooses to favour only the personnel and policies of the centre-right he'll run into trouble.
Of the 21, there are only seven more-or-less reliable centre-right votes around the council table. Three more centre-right councillors will support Brown on many things but not if he sets the council at war with itself.
Nine councillors are pretty firmly on the centre-left. The last two have a renegade track record and could jump any which way.
This is not a recipe for stability or success. But if Brown can resist the warring impulse and find ways to bring some of the independents and centre-leftists into the fold, he could build himself a solid consensus.
They will argue about how big or small to make any rates increase. Also, how to make progress with transport and climate action. But on the whole, it's not impossible they could muddle along.
Nothing wrong with optimism.
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