Shane Jones has conceded New Zealand First's future can't be dependent on him winning the prized Northland seat.
Northland has become the next best thing to a safety net for the party, which polled just 2 percent in the last Newshub-Reid Research poll - under the 5 percent needed to get back into Parliament.
If Northland's a battleground for New Zealand First, these don't sound like the words of a victor.
"Despite my ego and big words I can't match the mana of my leader," Jones said on Newshub Nation on Saturday.
"The reality is for a minority party like NZ First we harvest our votes in the four winds. We don't rely on one candidate like myself."
Jones is conceding New Zealand First's future can't rely on winning Northland.
"I do believe I can be a magnet up north but in order to achieve the perpetuation of our political movement in Parliament we need to gather votes from everywhere," he said.
Key to his party's strategy is killing off their unwanted sibling in Government.
"I'm going to do everything in my power to ensure the Greens do not survive," he told Newshub.
Under Labour it'd be his $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) that wouldn't survive, though Labour's candidate Willow-Jean Prime is keen to see it continue.
"Absolutely I have seen the benefit of the PGF," she says.
National's Matt King - who took the seat off Winston Peters at the last election - would prioritise roading instead.
"Investing in the regions is a good thing but some of these projects that the PGF have funded do not pass muster," he says.
But every party's claiming to be the gang busters.
"We cannot tolerate a culture of excessive drug use. I'm hardline against gangs," Jones says.
"We've got to target them, we've got to go hard, we need to hit them hard, " King says.
"If it was that simple we would have addressed the issue and solved it already," Prime says.
Northland's an electorate that typically votes National, apart from a blip when Peters took the seat in the 2015 by-election.
That was with a nod from Labour - without it, it's a tall order.
