Well, that was quick. No sooner do I try to make sense of election strategy in my home electorate than National forces out its candidate. In hindsight, I was ascribing them too much intelligence. And Stephen Jack is not going quietly.
The issue is this: a couple of old Facebook posts from 2020-2021 have come to light, where Jack shared a poem comparing Jacinda Ardern with Hitler, and another one, where he shared a bad-taste joke. One that went “I like my Covid like I like my women. 19 and easy to spread.” Note that, based off his photo, the guy looks to be in his 50s or 60s.
Now, my personal reading of this is that Stephen Jack is not a smart man, and comes across as a bit of a creep. Had he remained candidate, I think Ingrid Leary (the incumbent Labour MP) would be over the moon. But Taieri always was unwinnable for National, and dare I say, it would not surprise me if Jack’s base among the Clutha farming community potentially finds Jack’s “colourful” brand of humour endearing, rather than outright offensive.
I don’t actually think this is a matter of personal integrity either. Violations of integrity require a degree of intelligence, and Jack simply isn’t bright enough for that. Besides, people do, after all, share stupid stuff on social media all the time – and National’s Tauranga MP (not merely candidate. Actual MP) has some interesting history regarding allegations of boarding school violence. In contrast to that, Jack hasn’t actually injured anyone. He’s just a creepy old prat, acting like a creepy old prat, and (unlike beating someone with a bed-leg) that is not a crime.
(He’s also currently lashing out at the media: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/488345/national-s-ex-candidate-stephen-jack-accuses-media-of-woke-stupidity-and-character-assassination ).
If truth be told, a bigger issue behind Jack getting forced out might be his association with the Groundswell group ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundswell_NZ ) – a rural organisation with its share of ugly right-wing nuttery, and a fondness for anti-vaccine connections. That sort of thing might fly with an ACT candidate, but National wants to present itself as respectable, and free from colourful characters obscuring messaging. The Facebook posts might have got Jack into the media spotlight, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Groundswell thing encouraged National to cut him adrift.
(Of course, if his campaign team – or the party’s Head Office – had any sense, they’d have deleted his Facebook account (or at least gone through it) before his selection was officially announced).
So what exactly happened?
If I might hazard a hypothesis, National saw its 2020 result in Taieri and concluded (correctly) that the seat was unwinnable in the short term. This would be a reversal of its 2020 optimism – optimism that probably caused excessive Tory disappointment at Liam Kernaghan’s perfectly acceptable performance. So rather than import a ‘rising star’, National was content to leave the selection in the hands of the locals.
Now, the thing to remember about Taieri is that it is 70% urban, centred around the Red Fortress of South Dunedin (contrary to what North Island news outlets might think, the heart of this electorate looks less like Balclutha and more like St Kilda). The remaining 30% is the conservative rural Clutha and associated areas. Now, Clutha is a good deal more pro-Labour than rural Southland, but that is not saying much – rural Southland is uniquely right-wing. And Clutha is certainly a different beast from South Dunedin in every respect, including vaccine rates.
Well and good. But National leaving the Taieri selection to its local members means Clutha farmers decide the National candidate. Clutha farmers who don’t have Queenstown businessmen imposed on them, and where the party Head Office has written off the seat, so aren’t looking too closely.
So the Clutha farmers picked one of their own, Stephen Jack. Which might actually say more about where New Zealand’s farming lobby is headed ideologically, more than anything else. I do not consider Jack an outlier among those who selected him, especially on such matters as vaccines. And therein lies the heart of this. National’s Head Office should have had had someone look through Jack’s Facebook account first, deleting it if necessary. As it was, their candidate found himself blindsided by attacks on his bad taste content from a time before he entered politics.
As for where they go now… I think National could do worse than asking Liam Kernaghan to run again (perhaps with some sweetener attached). If Kernaghan doesn’t want it, let the farmers pick again… but this time make sure there’s no Groundswell nuttery associated with them, and make sure their Facebook page is squeaky clean. Not because they can win the seat – as emphasised, they can’t – but because they don’t want another Colourful Character getting into North Island news.
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