“Hello I have a question for the panel. Last year I was subject to a racist incident. It was on the corner of Bouverie and Grattan street. It was about 9.10am and…”

Out front of the Uni of Melbourne forum for the mayoral election, the nine candidates present shifted in their seats, their pose going from sympathy to uh-oh. This was the first question, from a mature-age international student. Was he about to regale them with a 45-minute description of the incident and end with a plea for less fluoridation?

Seated in the centre, Nathalie Nicole O’Sughrue rose to the challenge. With an outfit of base black, accessorised by a shining turquoise headband, and a mane of black curled hair, she shone like Persephone arising from the waves among the other candidates, who collectively had the air of a bunch of high school teachers on an away day.

“I’d like to say I have the deepest sympathy for what you’re going through …” We all relaxed. “I’m a survivor myself.” We all tensed a little. “Now I run an organisation that deals with situations like this …” Was she about to offer up a business card?

She didn’t as it turned out, but anything might have happened at this stage. The polls close today, after weeks of postal voting, in an election occasioned by the departure of Robert Doyle.

The bookies favourite is Sally Capp, the Tracy-Flick-grown-up executive head of the Victorian branch of the Property Council of Australia. Doubtless, she would be a truly independent mayor from the start, but it’s just faintly possible that all the major developers already have her number in their phone. She sat to the far left (yes, yes) with a smile plastered on her face. I took an instant dislike to her, to save time.

Her main rival is Rohan Leppert, the neat, pretty impressive — I would say that — Greens candidate.

Leppert normally wouldn’t stand much of a chance in a system where every Melbourne-based business has two votes, and residents one. Own two companies? Four votes. And so on. There are empty apartments with three, six, 10 votes in this city. It’s hard to think of how any current entity could be more Victorian than the Melbourne mayoral elections.

But almost everyone is preferencing Leppert ahead off Capp, and if a low turnout skews a certain way, he may be able to pull ahead. That said, in mayoral byelections — for reasons unknown to anyone — candidates’ how-to-vote tickets do not appear in the free brochure that goes to all residents.

So the donkey vote matters. Guess who got the number one slot? Sally Capp, candidate for MelbOURne — as the slogan on the T-shirts of her row of scruffy supporters (pilgrim-bearded, nine-dollar haircut students) seated in front of me said. Were they really Cappettes? Surely they were being paid. Maybe some genius at CPR, her communications firm, had come up with the MelbOURne thing, and plastered it all over randoms.

Capp wouldn’t disclose her spending at the forum, even when I started shouting at her. Hmm, maybe that doesn’t work in life as well as I thought. But a grizzled veteran of mayoral campaigns gave me an estimate later:

“I don’t reckon she’d get much change out of $400,000. Full mailout is a dollar an item for 144,000 voters, plus oncosts. I reckon CPR would be getting $60,000 for service. Billboards including the one above Young and Jackson’s pub got to be $60-80,000. Posters would be $30,000. Mobile billboards …”

“What about those poor kids on bikes dragging Sally’s face around?”

“Yeah them, erm, around $70-80,000 for staffing, including Anna Bligh’s ex-chief of staff as campaign manager. And I reckon there’s been other selective mailouts.”

All of it perfectly legal and proper. But there have been missteps.

“They sent out a Coles food van to give out free food at the Flemington flats.”

“The flats with a high African population?”

“Yeah. They weren’t happy about it.” (It’s public housing, not a work house, the reasoning went.)

“Free food? Bananas?”

“Apples apparently”.

None of the other candidates spend approaches these levels (and there is nothing illegal or improper about Capp’s spend). Ken Ong is a Liberal running as an independent, Jennifer Yang for Labor also running independent.

Sorry, what? The issues? Well, as raised by Leppert, independent candidate Sally Warhaft — campaigning principally on opposition to the existing Queen Victoria Market plans, and the town hall culture that made Doyle’s reign of error possible — they’re the fact that Melbourne local government has become so dominated by commercial-in-confidence deals that there is really no democratic oversight. “Five of eight items on an agenda can’t be discussed,” Warhaft told me. “It’s a joke.”

Perennial candidate Gary Morgan — sadly a no-show at the forum — is also anti-QVM redevelopment. Everyone except Capp and Ong is either opposed to the Apple store in Fed Square or, like Animal Justice Party candidate Bruce Poon, saying the decision and process needs to be re-examined. Kate Sfetkidis, an artist and lighting designer is, according to Artshub, running to promote “the arts and intersectional feminism”. Michael Burge, a trauma specialist is running on lessening trauma, a rather large workload.

He might have had a customer right there. When it ended, I asked the bumfluff Capp mafia in front of me what the hell they were there for. Were they being paid?

“She’s my mother,” said pilgrim beard. I thought of trying to get him to try and hit me — he was already a bit narked — but Crikey readers will be relieved to know I stopped short. Actually, readers will be disappointed. It’s management and editors reading this who are breathing a sigh of relief.

“Where are your preferences going?” I said to the shining O’Sughrue, as we walked out and — swear to God — her alert alarm went off in her handbag. “Don’t take it personally,” she said. I didn’t. She won’t need it as mayor, but it would have come in handy at Melbourne clown hall over the past five years.