THEY are the faceless candidates who have won the donkey spots on the Bathurst ballot paper – and they want your vote.
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But don’t expect them to try earning it.
As the Nationals’ Paul Toole, Country Labor’s Cassandra Coleman and The Greens’ Tracey Carpenter have been pounding the pavement, knocking on doors and pressing the flesh in a bid to win every vote possible at tomorrow’s state election, two of their rivals have taken a low-key approach.
A very low-key approach.
Narelle Rigby is contesting tomorrow’s poll for the Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) and Tom Cripps is the candidate for No Land Tax, but neither will have knocked on your door in the past few weeks.
In fact, neither appears to have even visited the electorate during the election campaign – though we can’t say for sure.
The Western Advocate tried to make contact with both candidates last week, hoping to interview them about their policies and reasons for running for Bathurst.
The only contact details provided by either candidate were for their respective party headquarters – a phone number for the CDP and email address for No Land Tax.
First the Advocate phoned the CDP only to be told the party could not give out Ms Rigby’s details and any request to speak with her would have to be put in writing.
We followed up with an email to the CDP asking for Ms Rigby’s phone and received an email back asking us to forward questions in writing.
The Advocate responded by saying we had no intention of putting our questions in writing as we wished to interview Ms Rigby as a candidate for the seat of Bathurst.
We provided the CDP with both an office number and mobile phone number that Ms Rigby could call to contact us and we have heard nothing more. That was last Wednesday.
But the Advocate has had even less joy trying to contact Mr Cripps.
The only contact details listed for Mr Cripps were the No Land Tax website and when we visited the site we found both a phone number for party head Peter Jones and an email address for party headquarters. We contacted both last Tuesday and are yet to hear back.
Ms Rigby has won the coveted top spot on the ballot paper while Mr Cripps is the last of five names listed.
They are the positions most likely to attract “donkey votes” and their respective parties will be hoping they can somehow muster the magical four per cent of votes that entitles them to claim back electoral expenses from the NSW taxpayer.