We have our first Hamilton West by-election bust-up with rebel ex-MP Dr Gaurav Sharma accusing Labour's candidate of messing with billboards in a former campaign.
It's expected to be a tough race for all and Newshub has exclusively obtained one party's internal polling which reveals who the real underdog is.
The first hoarding is officially up - it's by-election season in Hamilton.
ACT is getting its act together to announce backbencher Dr James McDowall will run for the party.
"We know we're gonna have to work hard," said leader David Seymour.
It's a race where everyone is claiming to be the underdog.
"I reckon James McDowall in this race, he's the hot dog," said Seymour.
The underdog-off was sparked by Dr Sharma's resignation.
"I am the underdog," said Dr Sharma on Thursday.
His old party, Labour, has chosen the head of a private teachers' union Georgie Dansey as its candidate.
"We know that Labour is the underdog in this by-election. We were not helped by the outgoing MP," she said.
Dansey's also got a little green skeleton in her closet.
"In 2017, two of my good friends were standing with the Green Party. They asked me to be their campaign manager."
Dr Sharma recalls a run-in with her on the 2017 campaign trail.
"She had admitted that the Green Party had been removing signs and replacing our Labour signs with the Green Party signs," he said.
Dansey doesn't recall pulling any signs down herself.
"I don't remember anything to do with that," she said.
National has no candidate yet, but they've got three shortlisted.
"It's going to be a really tough by-election," said National leader Christopher Luxon. "The reason is very simple. Labour has a vast majority there, both in the party vote and the candidate vote."
Polling commissioned by the ACT Party and released exclusively to Newshub shows the National candidate - whoever it may be - in pole position.
It asked 400 Hamilton West voters, 'while candidates for the by-election haven't been announced yet, which party's candidate are you most likely to vote for?'.
The results show 44.7 percent said they'd vote for the National candidate, 36.6 percent said they'd vote for Labour's and just 2.5 percent said they'd vote for Dr Sharma.
"My intention is to put up the best fight that I can," he said.
National's due to choose its candidate on Sunday and may wish to brush up on its campaign skills because they're back, back again, with another copyright snafu.
Five years since they lost themselves in an Eminem court battle over an old campaign advertisement which then-campaign manager Steven Joyce called "pretty legal", the party has been forced to remove an Instagram video featuring Katy Perry's song for Menulog.
"We were asked to take it down. We took it down very quickly. Pretty relaxed about it," said Luxon.
Jenna Lynch Analysis
Newshub's told the great billboard bust-up of 2017 is not something many people have lost much sleep over.
The genesis of the allegation was that Dansey had herself been ripping down signs. It now seems to be that some Green volunteers did and she was responsible as the campaign manager.
Dansey does recall some kind of conversation being had while Dr Sharma says a complaint was made with Labour.
It seems to have been long since forgotten by Labour's head office and they don't seem overly troubled by Dansey's fling with the Green Party either.
But Labour volunteers would have been the ones putting in the hours to put those hoardings up and those same volunteers will be relied upon to do the hard yards for Dansey's campaign.
