To run, or not to run, that is the question.

Having contested every conceivable election — Victorian lower and upper house, Melbourne Lord Mayor, local council and federal lower house — the Senate was the last box to tick for “Australia’s most unsuccessful candidate”.

However, having tasted victory at Manningham Council in late 2008 and through the better half, Paula Piccinini, on the RACV board in 2006 and 2009, the focus has shifted to actually winning.

Crikey psephologist Charles Richardson was commissioned last year to explore winnable opportunities in the federal and Victorian elections and concluded that the northern metropolitan region in the state upper house is the most do-able.

Charles advised that a half Senate election is nigh on impossible for independents unless you’re a Nick Xenophon and get a primary vote of almost 15%.

However, it became impossible to sit this one when Julia Gillard decided to re-badge Labor as “Australians Against Further Immigration” and then it emerged that Liberal Senator Julian McGauran owns a pokies venue near Gillard’s Melbourne home.

As an old Liberal moderate I’d have happily voted for Malcolm Turnbull but then Tony Abbott took over and we got climate change denialism, the demonisation of refugees and now effective promises to slash immigration by more than 100,000.

Making matters worse, the Liberals have offered up the weakest Senate ticket in Victorian history led by Ballarat boy Michael Ronaldson — who helped torpedo John Faulkner’s much-needed campaign finance reforms — and then effectively two Nats, given McGauran’s sensational defection in 2006. There is no Liberal-National senate candidate from Melbourne, let alone someone of the calibre of Richard Alston or Rod Kemp.

All of this made it irresistible so after a lunch with Richardson last Sunday, the pitch was made to the sceptical better half who gave the green light to the tilt but is still resisting signing up to be the running mate. She’s imposed strict spending limits based around donations received.

The starter’s gun was fired with a few paragraphs in John Durie’s column in The Australian’s business section this morning, followed by this 2am press release sent to the entire Canberra press gallery detailing the anti-pokies and pro-immigration tilt.

The phone rang at 6.30am and then it was into the city for this five-minute discussion with 774 ABC Melbourne morning presenter Jon Faine shortly before 9am.

The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since. Three micro parties, including Family First and the DLP, have already made contact regarding preferences and that will be the most important decision to make.

The Faine discussion publicly set up a preferences auction around pokies policy and I’m very much hoping Nick Xenophon himself will do the negotiating in terms of future commitments from both sides of politics.

The Productivity Commission laid out some excellent suggestions earlier this year with the $1 maximum bet proposal being the most important.

While it would require a primary vote of at least 5% to even be an outside chance — the Greens lost last time with more than 10% — the whole point of this exercise is to leverage something meaningful out of the political duopoly about the pokies.

I’m convinced my 1-3% of the vote will determine at least one and possibly two of the six Victorian Senate seats.

For Labor to even be in the conversation, they will need to commit to sell those four notorious pokies clubs the party itself runs in Canberra.

Richard Farmer explained the background of the previous attempts to flog them off when the CFMEU offered $25 million and the National Union of Workers could only come up with $10 million in cash upfront.

What an unseemly situation to have the Left and Right factions of the ALP squabbling over who can pocket the cash from preying on problem gamblers, who the PC reported deliver 40% of all pokies revenue.

It’s amazing to think that the Canberra Labor Club’s 60,000 members is probably more than the Labor Party itself when you strip out all the branch stacking.

There’s no other major political party in the world that fleeces problem gamblers to fund its political operations. Surely Julia will put a stop to this if she wants unionist Anthony Thow to win from No.3 on the ALP’s Victorian senate ticket.