The Hunters & Collectors classic Holy Grail plays over the speakers as Fenway Public House fills with aqua and navy blue.
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Canberra Liberals often say that it's not easy being blue in the nation's capital.
But they're among friends inside this Woden laneway venue as they prepare to launch Zed Seselja's election campaign.
"Zed, Zed, Zed," chant the supporters as Seselja accepts the microphone from Energy Minister Angus Taylor, who has travelled down the Federal Highway to support his close friend and factional ally.
Every election campaign includes an event like this; the main candidate, the central message, a rallying of the party faithful to energise the final push before polling day.
Seselja has now launched seven campaigns in a career spanning 18 years.
None has carried this much weight, expectation and attention.
Zed Seselja is in the fight of his political life.
A live contest
In the first of a two-part special report on the ACT's most polarising politician, Zed Seselja, The Canberra Times examines the question being asked across the nation's capital.
Is the Morrison government's "Mr Canberra" about to lose his Senate seat, leaving the Liberals without a federal ACT representative for the first time since 1975?
Seselja's unflinching brand of conservatism in the left-leaning ACT makes him a target at every election. He stared down a unions-backed "Dump Zed" campaign and a well-resourced, climate-focused independent candidate to hold on in 2019.
But the emergence of high-profile independents David Pocock and Kim Rubenstein, the established threat of the Greens and the burden of being part of a Coalition government deeply unpopular with Canberra voters has made him more vulnerable than ever.
Scott Morrison's Minister for the Pacific remains the favourite to retain his seat after the May 21 ballot, though insiders believe the contest has tightened in recent weeks.
At the very least, like none before it, the ACT has a live election contest.
It is evident in the flurry of announcements and pledges Seselja has made in recent weeks, including a $15 million promise to upgrade Viking Park and the unlocking of CSIRO land for affordable new housing.
It is conspicuous in the number of corflutes displayed across the city, including those from Liberals-linked Advance Australia attempting to smear Pocock as a Green in disguise. The ad run is being mirrored online.
And it's crystal clear from the increasingly alarmist language Seselja and his allies are using to warn Canberrans about the risk of dumping their only conservative voice in the Federal Parliament.
"The Labor Party, the Greens and their Green-independent supporters want to see no Liberals," Seselja told supporters at the campaign launch.
"They think everyone here in Canberra thinks the same. They think everyone shares that Labor-Green ideology.
"Well, we do not. We stand between them."
A threat on the left flank
Seselja and Taylor's speeches to the campaign launch were littered with references to "fake independents" or "Green independents" contesting the election.
But not once did either mention the name David Pocock, the former Wallabies captain and conservationist turned independent candidate who, along with the Greens' Tjanara Goreng Goreng, pose the biggest threat to Seselja's political survival.
It is a tactic being used by the government to abstract the challengers.
The Pocock threat has grown substantially in the past four months.
Figures inside the major parties were at first dismissive of Pocock's chances, believing his overwhelming focus on climate change wouldn't be enough to distinguish him from the Greens nor attract enough "soft" Liberal voters to topple Seselja.
The Canberra Times understands internal research from one party had the former Brumbies star's primary vote at about 7 or 8 per cent at the start of the year, commendable for a name-brand independent but not nearly enough to get across the line.
But the view and the numbers have shifted amid a broadening of Pocock's platform, which now includes positions on issues ranging from infrastructure to law enforcement and housing affordability.
The sheer scale and professionalism of the Pocock campaign machine has surprised some of his new political opponents.
He's amassed an army of more than 1800 volunteers, about double the size of the Canberra Liberals' entire membership, erected corflutes in all corners of the city and is running slick ads on television.
Pocock hasn't said how much is being spent on the campaign, but he is backed by Simon Holmes a Court's Climate 200 and had received more than 400 individual donations as of the first week of the election campaign.
The Climate 200-commissioned polling showed the Greens' primary vote at 14-15 per cent and Pocock at 11-13 per cent.
Seselja's vote was at 24 or 25, well short of the 33.3 per cent needed to secure a seat in his own right and, as a result, leaving him vulnerable to losing on preferences.
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Liberal sources believe Seselja will hold on. Asked directly if his former Legislative Assembly colleague would win, ex-ACT opposition leader Alistair Coe replied: "Yes".
But there is a sense the contest will be far closer than anyone though it would be when Pocock announced his candidacy last December.
"It looks like it's quite close," says John Warhurst, emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
"Zed Seselja is campaigning extremely hard and that's always a sign that their own internal polling and their own sense of what's going on shows them that it's very tight."
Pocock's hopes were boosted further last week when Labor revealed it would preference Pocock second on its how-to-vote cards, ahead of the Greens and Rubenstein.
'Toughest election in a generation'
At 3pm on the day The Canberra Times revealed the results of the Climate 200-commissioned poll, an email landed in the inbox of Seselja supporters.
"There's no sugar coating it - this will be the toughest election in a generation in the ACT," the email read.
"But you and I know, now is not the time to be handing over more power to the Labor-Green-Green Independent Alliance."
Rather than despair at the poll results the senator's team saw opportunity, using the pre-election scare to appeal for donations toward his campaign.
His team has been rallying grassroots support since late last year in the hope of building a $75,000 war chest to fend off his challengers, particularly the former Wallabies captain.
The sense of urgency has increased, but the pitch is always the same.
Canberra can't afford to lose its only Liberal in the Federal Parliament, the only local politician who will stand up on issues such as freedom of speech and religion.
If the pitch seems narrow, it is. And it's deliberate.
Seselja needs at most a third of the vote to retain his seat, meaning he can afford to focus on consolidating his conservative base. Often that means deliberately antagonising his opponents on the left.
The alleged risks of Greens and progressive independents to Australia's national security, economy and social fabric are at the centre of his campaign message.
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He points to the Labor-Greens alliance in the ACT, in particular its drug decriminalisation agenda, to warn of what would eventuate if Anthony Albanese was forced to strike a power-sharing deal with Adam Bandt after the election.
Seselja also leaps to the unsubstantiated conclusion that an Albanese minority government would adopt the Greens plan to slash defence spending.
"This election more than ever we need to get in the trenches," he told the launch.
"There is a lot to fight for. There is a lot at stake here in Canberra. There is a lot at stake here in our nation."
'I do stay in touch'
The most common charge against the social conservative Seselja is that he's out of touch with mainstream Canberrans.
He opposed same-sex marriage and the ACT's right to legislate on voluntary assisted dying - two issues local voters are firmly in favour of.
"Of course there are some issues where you know my views won't always reflect a majority of Canberrans," he says.
"But I'm sure that would be true of my opponents as well. Look at some of the issues that Labor pursues around union dominance. I doubt 51 per cent of Canberrans are saying that's a great idea."
Seselja says the policies he's fought for throughout his career are in the mainstream. He notes that under his leadership the Canberra Liberals won the primary vote at the 2012 ACT election, a sign the community was on his side.
He's made housing affordability a major focus at this election, promising to free up land for about 2000 homes at the CSIRO site in Ginninderra.
"I do stay in touch," he says.
"I live in the suburbs. I'm raising a family. We deal with a lot of the same issues that other Canberrans deal with."
Former chief minister-turned-senator Katy Gallagher says the Coalition is suddenly not taking the ACT for granted now that one of their own is under threat.
She says that can only be a good thing, and if Seselja is voted out, that will only continue.
"In that hypothetical situation, I would imagine it would make the Liberal Party work harder for Canberra. They want to win something back in three year's time," she says.
"You know, maybe they'll take it a little bit more seriously.
"I would think they would work doubly hard to get it back. Having said that, Zed is obviously working hard, so he's worried."
Chief Minister Andrew Barr last month said he was "enjoying" watching Seselja under pressure, after the senator secured $11.4 million to reopen the mothballed AIS Arena.
Seselja pushes back at accusations that neither he nor his government have delivered for the nation's capital, pointing to the $2.1 billion of infrastructure investment since 2018.
'It would be a loss for the nation'
An enormous map of the Pacific spans a corner wall of Seselja's ministerial office in Parliament House.
The tiny nations dotted around the region have long been like family for Australia. But the bonds are being strained.
At the same time this interview was conducted an unverified document appearing to show the terms of a security pact between the Solomon Islands and China was circulating on social media.
The document was real and within weeks Seselja had been dispatched to Honiara as Australia scrambled to thwart the deal.
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It failed, sparking what has been one of the defining political rows of the federal election.
The China-Solomon Islands agreement has no doubt damaged Seselja and the Coalition, undermining their credibility on national security.
But Seselja's colleagues are rallying around him.
Public Service Minister Ben Morton says losing Seselja would be a "big loss for the people of Canberra", leaving the ACT without federal representation on the conservative side of politics.
Taylor goes even further when asked what defeat for Seselja on May 21 would mean for the Coalition and Canberra.
"It would be a loss for the nation," he says.