John Palino

John Palino is a businessman and political candidate. Palino unsuccessfully ran to be mayor of Auckland in the 2013 and 2016 elections.

Palino was born in New Jersey, an American of Italian descent.

He trained as an actor using the Meisner technique.

Palino has had a long career in the restaurant business.

Palino starred in a television show The Kitchen Job, which screened from 2008 to 2012. The show involved him helping restaurateurs to improve under-performing restaurants.

His campaign manager for the 2013 campaign was former National Party president John Slater.

Palino's campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, with him receiving 108,928 votes to Len Brown's 164,338.

Palino says he was unaware of an affair between Auckland mayor Len Brown and Bevan Chuang before news of it broken in the media. He denies that he discussed the affair with Chuang before it was publicly revealed, as Chuang claims.

Palino announced that he would run for mayor Auckland again on 29 February 2016. His announcement was the first time he addressed the media since the controversy surrounding Len Brown after the last local government elections in 2013.

At his campaign launch he was immediately questioned by media regarding his links with the Len Brown sex scandal in 2013. Media also questioned his involvement with players in the Dirty Politics affair – Simon Lusk, Carrick Graham and Cameron Slater. He responded to media questions by saying he had done nothing wrong in 2013, and that he had hired Simon Lusk "because he is the best". He also said:

There's no dirty politics in my campaign. But let me tell you something about dirty politics. It was Len's team that got the media to turn onto me. That's dirty politics to me.

Palino's main platform for his campaign is to reduce rates by 10 per cent. He claims he is planning to publish a book detailing $150 million of annual savings. He is planning to launch an alternative budget for the Auckland Council, produced in cooperation with Larry Mitchell, an accountant working with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

At the time his campaign was announced, there were already two other centre-right candidates in the mayoralty race -- businesswomen Victoria Crone and local-government politician Mark Thomas.

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