KEY POINTS:
Jerry Collins award: Timaru council candidate Karen Collings for being arrested and charged with urinating in a gutter outside a hotel. Pleading a weak bladder condition may win her sympathy from voters.
Best billboards: Auckland City mayoral candidate Alex Swney's bright orange, snappy messages.
Worst billboards: Manukau mayoral candidate and former telly star Craig Little employed all his PR skills.
Most tragic moment: Christchurch city councillor and Paralympian Graham Condon hit by a car while training and killed.
Sincerest election promise: Scruff Ralph, standing for the Auckland City mayoralty, said he did not need the salary of $158,000 and would give $100,000 to the City Mission and Women's Refuge.
Bro-town to do: Pacific Island and Maori mayoral candidates in Manukau, Arthur Anae and Willie Jackson, getting their knickers in a twist over Otara councillor Su'a William Sio allegedly saying a "brown man" was not ready to lead the city.
Best rark-up: John Banks on Dick Hubbard at the St Marys Bay Association.
(Banks: This is a mayor and council out of control with your chequebook. Not one single citizen in this room would have signed up to the Chinese tiling job in Queen St. One of the worst tiling jobs in the modern cities of the world.
Hubbard: That's crap.
Banks: It is crap. That's what it is. And all the galvanised water pipes under Queen St are going to have to be taken up.
Hubbard: That is wrong. That is an untruth.
Banks: What is not an untruth is that two weeks ago in Mission Bay this mayor said rates would increase by 37 per cent.
Hubbard: He did not. He did not.)
Best gimmick: North Shore mayoral candidate Andrew Williams' Korean-made key rings intended for the Korean community, where it seems token gifts like this are usual. Williams took a Herald Sideswipe dig at the key rings as a personal slur. He said: "One person has emailed me saying he was going to vote for me but won't now as he sees me as a crass idiot having seen the key-ring article." The key rings implied he was a North Shore city councillor but he has not been since 2004.
Best word: Transmogrification, used by John Banks to reinvent himself. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "to transform in a surprising or magical manner". Surprising? Yes. Magical? We'll have to wait and see.
This town ain't big enough for the two of us: Former runner Dick Quax shoots from the lip. "I'm somebody who wants to do something about the gangs and crime. Willie Jackson called me 'Dirty Harry', which I thought was an endorsement."
