Dirty Dancing mayor milks the public vote

A month ago, when Mickey’s dancing incompetence was just a matter for endless mayoral press releases and the famous broken toe was a mere twinkle in his eye, the Chronicle’s senior mayoral sycophant John Maslin noted that Mickey wasn’t about to resile from his criticism last year of the way Southland Mayor Tim Shadbolt curried favour with the public in order to gain a stay of execution from Dancing With The Stars.

In a March 10th story headlined “Dancing in Tim’s shoes” Mas breathlessly reported:

“YOU’VE heard of Dirty Dancing? Well, for Wanganui’s mayor it may be more of a case of desperate dancing. But he will not recant on his stinging criticism of Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt, the man who took ballroom dancing to interesting levels in the first Dancing with the Stars competition in 2005. “This wasn’t about dancing in Tim’s case. He had so engineered the vote that the dancing was irrelevant,” Mr Laws said.

Well, engineering the vote is something Wanganui’s Mayor has obviously spent more time practising of late than the dance demeanour that is needed to convince the judges that, as one perspicacious adjudicator noted at the end of the horribly embarrassing performance in Round One, he’s more than “an overexcited smutty little schoolboy”.

Apart from the loyal and devoted Wanganui press, which has decided to draw a discreet veil over the leering, panting, poncing Mayor’s woeful performance, Mickey treated Women’s Day readers (prime DTWS voting demographic) to a heart-warming family photo and story about how he’s going to be Mr Mum because his partner’s following in that other Vision councillor Sue Pepperell’s tyre treads and fleeing Wanganui for Wellington.

Needless to say, Women’s Daze didn’t waste precious space discussing Ms Brookhammer’s already woeful performance as Mickey’s puppet on Horizons council, or asking whether she’s continue drawing her member’s salary. And even more needless to say, neither did Mas or his lady editor think to do any more than just run Mickey’s press release after being “scooped” by the women’s trash mag.

Nor has Mas thought to ask about the propriety of the Wanganui District Council throwing ratepayers’ dollars at the problem of how to persuade people to vote for Michael Laws despite his obvious incompetence and unwillingness to learn from his mistakes. Add up the hectares of space the ratepayers are buying for Mickey in the likes of Community Link and other council organs, and then ask why council communications like emails are urging people to gamble their hard-earned cash on a proven loser.

But if you have the misfortune to be a council staffer, whatever you do don’t try to defend the WDC website real estate against the mad marauding mayor, because that will land you in trouble. A recent LawsWatch commenter who noted that early resistance to Mickey’s demand for a vote-harvesting picture of him and his long-suffering dance partner had proved futile apparently triggered what’s been described by another commenter as a “witch hunt” at 101 Guyton St. In the event, the result has been a great promotion for this blog with the few remaining staff members who were not already visitors asking how to tap into the only real source of honest comment about Mickey’s Mad Empire.

So as we watch Mickey hanging on by his paws and continue to embarrass Wanganui on national TV with his best Hannibal Lector impersonations, it’s worth remembering Tim Shadbolt’s words of wisdom in Mas’s prescient March story:

“In terms of the dancing, Southland’s mayor has some wisdom to pass on there as well: “Get really fit and really disciplined. If you’re just disciplined but not fit, you’ll never make it. And if you’re fit but not disciplined you won’t make it either.”