Election 2020: An Uphill Battle for Chlöe Swarbrick in Auckland Central

It’s an election seat like a feather in the cap, a matter of pride among the big parties, a race for the top spot in the high-rise city. And it is still too close to determine who will win in Auckland Central. Reports by John Weekes.

“Hey, I just saw Chlöe,” a college student tells her friends.

She’s too shy or surprised to approach Auckland Central Green Party candidate Chlöe Swarbrick, 26, but others are not.

The electorate has the highest proportion of young people aged 20-29 in the country, and Swarbrick appears to have tripled the support that its green predecessor, Denise Roche, had in 2017.

But some of Swarbrick’s most ardent fans on a sunny 19-degree spring day aren’t actually Auckland Central voters. Flora Burrell is not old enough to vote yet.

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Flora and Chester Young, both 17, arrived from Wellington and meet their favorite candidate at Britomart, where workers in orange high-visibility vests check their iPhones or stand on the road to deter traffic from entering the works.

“She’s the coolest,” Chester says of Swarbrick.

He will turn 18 just before the October 17 election and sees voting as an important rite of passage, rather than being able to buy alcohol legally.

You can do it any day, he says, but you can only vote once every three years.

“She expresses in words what I think youth culture really represents in politics.”

Swarbrick’s party is committed to giving all New Zealanders a universal basic income. She has praised the Labor-led government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but raised concerns about housing in a city where property prices are expected to rise $ 57,000 in the next three months.

Flora calls herself “a bit of an environmental hippie,” on a vegan diet and a bag of hemp, and she would vote for Swarbrick if she could. She says it’s understandable that the Covid-19 pandemic is attracting so much attention, but she’s disappointed that climate change and pollution aren’t getting longer airtime.

Swarbrick’s popularity becomes even more apparent when you walk down the hall between Westpac’s headquarters and the Jarden building, where NZX tickers show stock prices and exchange rates.

She earns words of encouragement from the office workers and a warm reception from almost everyone except a security manager who insists that a patio outside Westpac is a no-go zone for all parties.

“People respect her, because she always presents herself as someone who does this because she wants to make the world a better place,” says political scientist Dr. Lara Greaves.

Greaves of the University of Auckland says the Greens got between six and seven percent of the party’s votes in recent polls.

But she says the party generally fares worse on election day than it does at the polls. That will worry the Greens, especially since Thursday’s One News-Colmar Brunton poll had the game at just six percent.

Greaves says Swarbrick’s “celebrity” status has a downside, leaving her vulnerable to claims by her political rivals that she has more style than substance.

Although Swarbrick ranks third in Auckland Central polls, the surge in support it has apparently achieved is unusual. Roche won 9.7 percent here, but Swarbrick was at 26 percent in a poll published last Sunday.

Greaves says it is rare for a new party candidate to improve so dramatically over his predecessor. The key for Swarbrick, Greaves says, is making sure the young people who adore her get out there and vote.

At Britomart, Swarbrick pauses for a moment to check his phone. It’s a message of support from his father, who says he always used to be a national voter.

“I grew up in a Tory house. That came largely from Dad’s experience in finance. “

But the global financial crisis was a turning point, convincing Swarbrick that economic policy should not focus on growth at all costs, but on taking care of people.

Swarbrick had wanted to be a journalist. But reporting the news is not the best career for someone interested in publicly expressing strong political opinions.

“I don’t think we realize that everyone comes to everything with life experiences, prejudices and prejudices. Those are not inherently bad or negative things, ”he says.

“But what they are informs the points of view we have towards the world.”

An uphill battle

Nearby, a young father and campaign volunteer, Tom Pearce, says the Greens are the best chance we have to make sure the world in 2040 or 2050 is a nice place to live.

He says the narrow gap between Swarbrick, Labor’s Helen White and National’s Emma Mellow means Swarbrick will only need to win over about 1,000 Labor and national voters.

But about 30,000 people voted here in the last election, so the Greens might also need a complacent Labor campaign, a mediocre national campaign, or an especially brilliant campaign of their own.

The first two options are out of the control of the Greens. White and Mellow show no signs of slowing down.

“It looks pretty close,” says Pearce. “Obviously, he’s fighting an uphill battle.”

Local politics have changed, but Auckland Central remains highly controversial. Labor has refused to strike deals here with potential Green Coalition partners, despite weak voting numbers from the smaller party.

Auckland Central hasn’t produced a Premier since George Gray in 1887, but it sits straddling the country’s richest business district, busiest harbor, and largest university.

Beyond the managed isolation facilities of the Pullman Hotel, Swarbrick climbs up Symonds St, between the University of Auckland conference rooms and the student residences.

Every two years, the horizon here seems to change, with new accommodation blocks. But Covid-19 put the brakes on New Zealand’s $ 5 billion international education sector, and the services available to students here could suffer if that money abroad runs out.

Law and pharmacology student James Rosendale spots Swarbrick on the sidewalk on Symonds St. They share personal anecdotes and debate the legalization of cannabis and the control referendum.

Swarbrick seems genuinely engaged, commenting on the interesting mix of topics he studies.

Rosendale says she is concerned that some people are peddling misinformation during the campaign, especially around the cannabis referendum.

But he says the tone of this election, and politics in New Zealand in general, is positive.

It is that, as much as any policy, that seems to give him hope.

“I am very grateful for New Zealand, where you can have friends with widely divided political opinions, but you can still be friends without being attacked for your opinion.”