How Lester lost

Rob Mitchell looks at how Justin Lester lost.

One key extract:

A public crying out for meaningful change, sick and tired of waiting for buses that didn’t show, had to make do with a rainbow crossing, bilingual street signs and a little al fresco dining.
Rather than growing city business, as Lester had promised, he was fronting a council closing so many doors – the town hall, St James Theatre, its main library among many others.
A stronger mayoral team might have helped accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. 
But Munro left, to be replaced by then Labour Party vice president Beth Houston as the mayor’s public affairs adviser.
She out-ranked Lester in the party and now, as one insider points out, “often orders came back from the Labour Party, rather than the city’s agenda being pushed at the party caucus”.

So Lester’s adviser was effectively actually his boss. This is the problem of having Mayors who are bound to a political party. They work for that party, rather than the city.

This is why we had a Mayor who didn’t fight for the Mt Vic tunnel.

But the Labour machine that had swung behind his campaign three years earlier, including co-ordination out of party offices, volunteers pounding the streets and Grant Robertson robocalls, was nowhere to be seen in 2019.
Details are unclear. Lester either declined offers of support or it simply wasn’t there. 

I hear he even went on holiday just before or during the campaign.