Ruth Gray may be the only mayoral candidate seeking a pay cut.
If she wins, the 34-year-old advocate for the Communist League wants the mayoral salary cut from its present $91,000 level to the equivalent of the average wage of a skilled worker.
Would she do the job for no salary, or just living expenses? We asked each mayoral candidate this question and Miss Gray's reply was the most succinct: "Yeah."
She has few illusions that the people of Christchurch will vote in a Communist mayor, but Miss Gray plugs on for a wider ideal.
"I'm standing to put forward the working-class voice, addressing the immediate needs of working people everywhere."
The production worker, a member of the Engineers Union, is having her second tilt at the city mayoralty. She stood against Vicki Buck in 1995 and scored 893 votes. This time, better versed in the strategy and tactics of mayoral warfare, she reckons her 10 years involvement in socialist and union organisations has equipped her well for the weeks ahead.
"There's a deep economic crisis of capitalism. What can working people do? How can we unite to fight for our interests?"
Miss Gray targets unemployment as a core issue, signaling a fight for a shorter working week, with no loss in pay, to force employers to hire more people.
Her conversation is peppered with buzz-words like "solidarity" and "workers", with the occasional "imperialist" thrown in to describe the enemy. At joint candidate meetings she has enjoyed the distinction of being the only mayoral candidate to emphasise "building solidarity with the socialist revolution in Cuba and opposing the U.S. military assault and sanctions against Iraq".
Miss Gray, whose CV declares her to be "single, no children", is active too in campaigns to defend women's rights to abortion and to oppose racism and sexual discrimination. This year she flew to Australia to meet sacked wharfies.
So what sort of Christchurch does Miss Gray want to live in by the time of the next local body elections in 2001?
"I want Christchurch to be a place where workers and farmers, on a local and national level, are working toward a society not based on profits but on human needs." Full employment, the elimination of inequality based on race and sex, and free health and education for everyone are her other ideals.
"It's about human dignity, fighting the attacks on our wages and living standards, the moves to degrade the working class of this country."
Her activist work has included standing on picket lines at Princess Margaret Hospital and the Alliance meat works and attending rallies organised by firefighters.
"We stand in solidarity with the struggles of working people."
That includes the unemployed? "Of course. The unemployed are workers who don't have a job."
She seems nervous in an interview, and volunteers little insight into her private life or interests, but her eyes gleam with the enthusiasm of someone fully committed to her beliefs.