A close adviser to Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown appears to have re-registered his campaign website, with it widely expected he will launch a re-election bid.
Chris Matthews, who served as Brown’s campaign manager three years ago, is listed as having re-registered the domain “fixauckland.co.nz” on Monday afternoon.
The website was last used three years ago during Brown’s successful campaign to win the Auckland mayoralty in a crowded field.
Matthews declined to comment directly when approached by 1News this morning, instead directing inquiries to another aide to Brown, Josh Van Veen. Brown’s office was first approached for comment yesterday morning but has not responded.
It comes as it’s roundly expected the Auckland Mayor will soon officially launch his re-election campaign. Brown has repeatedly teased his second tilt at the mayoralty, including in his regular column in the Sunday-Star Times this weekend.
Few others have declared their interest in September’s mayoral race.
Those include first-term West Auckland councillor Kerrin Leoni and third-time perennial candidate and former New Conservatives leader Ted Johnston.
Desley Simpson, Brown’s deputy on council, has publicly admitted she has been considering a run, but hadn’t decided despite her son registering the website “desleyformayor.co.nz”. Simpson said the URL has been acquired “as a bit of a laugh”.
Website domain registrars do not typically verify registrant names and contact details before listing them publicly.
Speaking to Q+A in September, Brown said his partner “wasn’t that mad” about the idea of him running again, but that “lots of people” had approached him about re-election.
“Lots and lots of people come up every day and say, ‘come on, run’.” he said.
“And I said: ‘Last time I put a whole lot of my own money in. You raise it this time and see how you go.’ How much do you really want me to be there? That probably would come pretty easily from the feedback I’ve got.”
He claimed to have private polling showing that he was more popular than Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, presumably in Auckland.
The Auckland Mayor spoke to Q+A’s Jack Tame. (Source: 1News)
“We’ve done some private polling, and I’m more popular than the Prime Minister at the moment,” he said. “What I’m concentrating on is doing the best for the ratepayers of Auckland — they seem to be quite liking that.”
By his assessment, the mayor said he had made “progress” on his five pre-election pledges to “fix Auckland”, but conceded it was far from mission accomplished, adding he wanted to “bed in” changes so they “couldn’t be undone”.
“I’ve made progress in all, but they’re not bedded in such that they can be reversed.”
