Opinion: Rotorua has spoken

WINNER: Steve Chadwick's victory today came as no surprise. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER

Karen Hunt will have lost count of the number of times she's had to defend the council's plans for the inner city.

As the inner-city portfolio lead, she has been the public face of projects such as the City Focus revamp, the Green Corridor and pricey sculptures - which have been as unpopular with a chunk of the population as they were popular with others.

She initially failed to gain re-election. She was humble in her loss. But last night in a dramatic twist, she was back in after special votes were counted, at the expense of Mike McVicker.

She initially thought her failure to gain re-election was paying the price for the council's relatively radical vision for the inner city but with this latest turn of events, she's been given the mandate.

The bolter on Saturday was Raj Kumar - the only new face on the council. Mr Kumar seems to have a sea of fans and has shown the enthusiasm and excitement about what lies ahead that you would expect from someone entering local politics for the first time.

For those who don't know Mr Kumar, we have more details about our first councillor of Indian descent on page 3 today.

And then we get to mayor. I don't think many people genuinely believed Steve Chadwick would be beaten.

Dr Reynold Macpherson and his group had a core group of supporters but Mrs Chadwick is popular and there are plenty of people who like what she and her council have done.

The pre-election predictions around Dr Macpherson and Rob Kent splitting the vote have been shown to have substance - as of 3pm Sunday between them the pair got 8656 votes to Mrs Chadwick's 7880.

But both had the right to stand. If one was good enough to be Rotorua mayor they would have earned enough votes on their own merits - rather than needing to rely on the anti-Chadwick vote.

It was a good effort by Dr Macpherson to get as close as he did. He has indicated the "yellow sign brigade" has no plans of quietly fading away.

So that's that, then. It's been fun, it's been crazy and it's been intriguing. And who knows? The way this election has played out, there could yet be a few more twists and turns to come.