A very democratic selection

Malcolm McMillan writes at Stuff:

A former police detective who has spent the last five years raising awareness of the dangers of methamphetamine has been selected as National’s new Northland candidate.

Mike Sabin will replace veteran Northland MP John Carter, who is retiring from politics after 24 years.

Sabin, of Coopers Beach, was the founder of MethCon, which he sold in September last year.

He was selected from a short list of five candidates for the job. The other candidates were Matt King, Ken Rintoul, Mark Tan and Sarah Davies.

Selection was via votes cast by 275 delegates with Sabin being announced the winner on Sunday.

Every single one of those delegates were local party members. Each branch gets a delegate for every 15 members, so the electorate as a whole has over 4,000 paid up party members. Over 10% of the electorate is a party member!

Congratulations to Mike Sabin for his victory. He has very big shoes to fill.