{"id":650,"date":"2007-10-15T01:23:04","date_gmt":"2007-10-15T01:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=650"},"modified":"2007-10-15T01:23:04","modified_gmt":"2007-10-15T01:23:04","slug":"return-of-the-prendergast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=650","title":{"rendered":"Return of the Prendergast"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Wellington re-elected Kerry Prendergast<\/a>. She is a virulently hated mayor; so much so, in fact, that I had a period where I was very worried that there was some nasty misogyny at the basis of it. After confiding these doubts to others I’ve been reconvinced that, no, it’s not that we hate women or hold them to higher standards, it really is because of what she has done.
\nShe is also, however, a mightily well-supported mayor. In the elections just completed, she doubled her nearest rival’s vote count.
\nThis suggests two things. First, that being so hated and so well-supported at the same time means she has been a very divisive figure in Wellington. And second, that the mayoral election suffered from the lack of a clear opposition figure around which the Kerry-haters could comfortably rally. She was head and shoulders and torso above everyone else in terms of profile, except for the disturbing spectre of wacky typo-guy John McGrath. The Single Transferable Vote system should have made it impossible for splitting the vote to be a factor, so it can only be lack of a candidate who actually appeals to the anti-Kerry crowd; either that or the anti-Kerry crowd really is massively outnumbered. I shudder at the thought of that.
\nI note with disapproval that Ms Prendergast wants to get rid of STV<\/a>.
\nIn any case, I blundered and didn’t end up voting. Remembering too late that my electoral roll address was still lodged as Scotland; I didn’t get that sorted out fast enough. Stink.
\nNew Zealand’s mayors do make me shake my head. John Banks? Michael Laws? We’re doing it to ourselves.
\n—
\nI am intrigued by the prospect of an England-Argentina final in the Rugby World Cup. Malc and I have been discussing with appalled fascination how the Brit red-top press will be eager to revive the spirit of the Falklands… Argentina need to make it through South Africa to get there, though, and that won’t be an easy task.
\n—
\nAnd I am marking. I have lots and lots of marking. Don’t talk to me, I’m marking. Marking now. Marking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Wellington re-elected Kerry Prendergast. She is a virulently hated mayor; so much so, in fact, that I had a period where I was very worried that there was some nasty misogyny at the basis of it. After confiding these doubts to others I’ve been reconvinced that, no, it’s not that we hate women or … Continue reading Return of the Prendergast<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-au","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}