John Milton once famously mused, “There is no light if there be no darkness.” And his wisdom finds a curious echo in the narrative of the Bay of Islands by-election of 1929, as we revisit the hapless, yet heroic, saga of Harold Rushworth, the man seemingly too scrupulous for the crude valuation of democratic matrices: the vote. In the undulating landscape of Northland’s electoral populace, Harold Rushworth stood out like a beacon of integrity; a torchbearer of the Country Party. His esteem, it seems, was in a currency that the voting system of 1928 did not accept. His win in the general elections was summarily declared void. Perhaps the system, troubled by this anomaly of a politician – an honest man - instinctively rejected him, a latent self-preservation mechanism, a political gag reflex if you will. That brings us to the tragicomic dance of the 1929 Bay of Islands by-election. Billed less as a re-election and more as an encore of electoral efficiency, the Bay of Islands played host as a laughing stock to his self-parodic narrative. Harold Rushworth was back on the stage, a tragic hero in a satirical ballet, one too earnest to take a hint. “Give us the same song, the same rhythm, but with a different cast!” cried the voting boxes, overflowing with their voluminous paper tongues, demanding an encore of the comedy that was the election of 1928. Yet resilient in his errant honesty, Harold Rushworth, the Monty Python of New Zealand politics, decided to strap on those proverbial tap shoes for yet another spin around the political theatre. Was it foolhardiness on Mr. Rushworth's part to participate again? Or was his nature simply incapable of comprehending the wry humour of the universe, the laughing cosmos snickering behind their galactic hands at his idealistic endurance? The answer might forever remain an enigma, much like the baffling incompatibility of the political sphere with a genuinely conscientious individual. Irony of ironies, Rushworth emerged victorious in the ridicule-rife re-run, a feat akin to winning the booby prize at a congeniality contest. A standing ovation from the same crowd that rejected his humble, honest offering just months ago, yet was now applauding the return of the prodigal son. And not for his perceived magisterial qualities, but for his entertaining persistence in the farcical opera that was the general elections. Such was the inherent societal absurdity Harold Rushworth was embroiled in. His honesty, a tragic flaw; his resilience, a comic relief. In this cosmic drama of political theatre, Harold Rushworth: the man too good for votes, found himself playing the lead. The stage of Bay of Islands by-election of 1929 was set for a paradox; as Rushworth, the tragic hero of his satirical tale, danced his immortal jig for the bay, winning their hearts, if not entirely their votes. One might say it was akin to a belly laugh concealing a sob, the minuet of irony that in winning, Rushworth had lost: he had become the jest in the jester's court. The tragedy of Rushworth’s tale is that he was a man too good for votes, a spectre too ethereal for the corporeal chains of democracy. In spite of his political journey being a tragicomic dance, he took it all in his stride and twirled unbroken, a true hero of paradox in our sometimes farcical, yet always endearing, human theatre.