A CANDIDATE for Lake Macquarie mayor has laughed off an opponent’s suggestion that he and his political party will only contest next month’s council election to split the independent vote.
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Laurie Coghlan, who is running for mayor as an independent, questioned why new local party the Lake Mac Independents has put up three mayoral candidates.
“It’s a deadset ploy to strip independent votes away from me as an independent,” Cr Coghlan said.
“The question has to be asked, who put forward this political party and why?”
The group referring to themselves as “Independents”, he said, belied the fact they were a political party.
Cr Coghlan, the longest-serving current Lake Macquarie councillor, said he had “been around a long time” and seen “a lot of dirty tricks”.
He pointed to a “splinter group” with ties to Labor party members that ran in the last council election, in which Labor’s Jodie Harrison was elected mayor.
“Is your vote going to an independent councillor or are you voting for a political party hiding behind a balaclava of concealment?” he said.
Asked if he thought the Lake Mac Independents were working with Labor to manipulate the vote, Cr Coghlan said, “if it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, smells like a duck, what is it?”
John Gilbert, one of three Lake Mac Independent candidates for mayor, said Cr Coghlan’s claim was “odd”.
“There’s no evidence for that at all. It’s very odd,” Mr Gilbert said.
“We’re definitely not targeting Laurie or anyone else. Why would we go to the trouble and expense to do that?”
In a field of six mayoral candidates, the Lake Mac Independents are running Mr Gilbert, former Swansea Christian Democratic Party candidate Luke Cubis, and New Hope Caves Beach senior pastor Colin Grigg.
Mr Gilbert is also a former member of the Christian Democratic Party, and a former Labor member.
The Swansea Heads real estate agent defended his party’s decision to run three mayoral candidates.
“We’ve got three founders, and we felt that any one of us could effectively fill the mayor’s role,” Mr Gilbert said.
“We feel there are people in the community who will vote for each of us.”
The Lake Mac Independents will contest the September 10 local government elections with a total of 12 candidates and a goal of getting most of them elected, Mr Gilbert said.
The party supports sinking a ship off Swansea to create diving areas, relaxing regulations for landowners who want to remove trees, reducing council debt and supplying more affordable housing.
The Herald was unable to reach Labor mayoral candidate Kay Fraser for comment.
