Businesswoman Dai Le is being squeezed out of yet another Liberal Party preselection – this time for Fairfield Council – amid claims about a political opponent's links to corrupt former Labor minister Joe Tripodi.
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Cr Le, whose failure to secure a winnable spot on the NSW Liberal upper house ticket at the 2015 state election drew the ire of Premier Mike Baird, is a Fairfield councillor.
But she is likely to be selected an unwinnable position on the Liberal Party ticket when voting occurs on Saturday for preselection to contest the September local government elections.
Fellow councillor Joe Molluso is supporting two local businessmen involved in the property industry, Peter Fowler and Paul Azzo, for Liberal preselection.
Cr Le is now considering whether to run as an independent candidate for mayor and councillor.
Before the last local government election in 2012, the Liberal Party sensationally refused to endorse any candidates.
The decision was made amid a raft of allegations against several candidates and councillors, including that some had links to Mr Tripodi.
Opponents of Cr Molluso recently distributed an email from Mr Tripodi to him and another councillor, Del Bennett, who is contesting preselection to be Labor's mayoral candidate against incumbent Frank Carbone.
The email, from March, linked to a media report about disciplinary action against another former councillor, Zaya Toma.
Mr Toma was disqualified from office for two years for hacking the email accounts of three fellow councillors, including Cr Mulloso. The two-year ban was overturned to a reprimand on appeal.
On Thursday, Cr Mulloso accused Cr Carbone of distributing the email.
"I will file a police complaint against Cr Carbone asking them to investigate how he got access to the email which was sent to my private account," he said.
"I have no relationship with Tripodi other than that Tripodi and I and our respective families attend the same parish church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mount Pritchard."
Cr Carbone declined to comment.
As Fairfax Media reported at the time, Mr Baird backed Ms Le for preselection on the Liberal Party's upper house ticket for the March 2015 election but was told by the factions they could not give her their support.
The position was won by Wollondilly councillor Lou Amato, with the support of then mental health minister Jai Rowell, who Mr Baird later dumped from cabinet.
After the election, Mr Baird delivered a speech challenging the NSW Liberals to get more women and people of multicultural background into Parliament.
In 2014, Mr Tripodi was found by the ICAC to have acted corruptly by "deliberately failing to disclose" to his cabinet colleagues that the family of corrupt former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid owned cafe leases at Circular Quay, which he renewed without a tender in 2009.
