Zempilas’ campaign manager facilitated secret leadership poll for mystery businessman

Basil Zempilas’ mayoral campaign manager Cam Sinclair facilitated polling that spruiked the Perth Lord Mayor and Liberal candidate for Churchlands as an electoral saviour for the party at the 2025 election.

Sinclair is a longtime Liberal party member and runs Perth agency Ammo Marketing, which is contracted by party HQ to provide digital advertising services during election campaigns as well as building websites like both Zempilas’ Churchlands campaign website and Liberal leader Libby Mettam’s website.

Basil Zempilas and Ammo Marketing founder Cam Sinclair (right) during Zempilas’ Perth mayoral campaign in 2023.Credit: LinkedIn/Cam Sinclair

He confirmed to WAtoday that his agency was behind the Sodali & Co polling but that it was commissioned by an Ammo Marketing client and was provided only to them – not Zempilas.

“We outsourced to Sodali on behalf of our client,” he said.

“We do work for a range of conservative groups around WA and need to respect client expectations to keep their work confidential. Just as any professional firm would.”

The polling, leaked to Seven West Media’s The West Australian, triggered a failed challenge of Mettam on Tuesday.

It surveyed more than 1000 respondents in target Liberal seats and suggested that Mettam leading the party to the next election would result in a 3 per cent swing away from the Liberals.

It said that swapping her out with Zempilas would result in a 4 per cent swing towards the party, resulting in victories in Churchlands, Nedlands and Carine, and putting Bateman and Scarborough in striking distance.

Mettam challenged her parliamentary colleagues to trigger a motion of no confidence against her at a party meeting at Parliament House on Tuesday morning, which they did not do.

A motion to create dual leadership roles that would have seen Zempilas become “campaign leader” of the party in the lead-up to the 2025 election also failed and Mettam declared she had a clear mandate of leadership.

She also took aim at “cowards in the shadows”, and called on WA media to out the mystery Perth businessman who commissioned the polling.

Perth Lord Mayor and Churchlands Liberal candidate Basil Zempilas and Ammo Marketing founder and former mayoral campaign manager Cam Sinclair from Sinclair’s own LinkedIn page.Credit: LinkedIn/Cam Sinclair

Zempilas emphatically denied that he knew about the poll and that he only found out about its existence a week ago by reading about it.

Zempilas deferred questions to Sinclair.

Speaking after the leadership challenge on Tuesday afternoon, Zempilas said he had been told a name but that it was not his information to share.

“I knew of polling when it was first written in the newspaper, and I think that was a week or so ago there was a suggestion that there had been other polling,” he said.

That polling was provided to Mettam’s camp about a fortnight ago by Zempilas ally and federal Liberal candidate for Forrest, Ben Small.

“As the volunteer Finance Chair for the WA Liberal Party, I have built extensive relationships with the local business community,” Small said in a statement to this masthead.

“Some time ago, I was presented with polling research by a business investor. I undertook to pass that research to Libby Mettam, which I did promptly and privately.

“I have sought to protect the interests of the Liberal Party in not distributing the polling to anyone except Libby Mettam.

“The party has today made its position very clear in support of Libby’s leadership, and I whole-heartedly support that outcome.”

Sinclair has run Liberal Party campaigns in the past, as well as both of Zempilas’ lord mayoral campaigns, and is running his campaign in Churchlands.

In a post following Zempilas’ victory at last year’s mayoral election, Sinclair sung the prominent media personality’s praises.

“I met Baz in 2020 when I ran his first campaign and he achieved 29 per cent of the vote. The second time is even more gratifying; almost doubling his share of the vote and proving Basil’s brand of strong leadership is what the ratepayers of Perth want” he wrote.

“It’s been an absolute highlight of my career to work with a true professional who understands how to connect with people from all backgrounds, unite teams and prioritise achieving real results for the people he represents.”

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