Mr Brooks, a Nowra businessman, was considered one of the front-runners for pre-selection but last week announced his withdrawal from the race, blaming factional tensions.

In doing so he blamed the “snide, horrible little people” driving the political machinations, drawing further attention to the internal problems plaguing the party at a local level.

“It’s not about putting the best person forward any more,” he said.

“You’re going to end up with someone interested in personal power and gain, not what they can contribute to the community.”

Mr Brooks’ withdrawal from the pre-selection race follows a decision by Milton resident and Shoalhaven City Councillor Robert Miller to resign from the Liberal Party just days before throwing his hat into the ring for pre-selection.

He told the Times that he was sick of the ‘dirty politics’ and was not going to put up with the power struggle going on locally within the party.

He made the decision after receiving another letter from the Liberal Party’s state director threatening his suspension over comments he made in the media last year and for questioning the role of party politics within lLocal Government.

Cr Miller claimed the threatened suspension was an underhanded tactic designed to tarnish his reputation during the pre-selection process.

Mr Brooks’ decision means just four people will be left to fight it out for pre-selection later this month including Shoalhaven City councillor Andrew Guile, Ulladulla resident Grant Schultz, former Kiama councillor Ann Sudmalis and Meroo Meadow marketing consultant Catherine Shields.

Mr Brooks told the South Coast Register in Nowra last week that after announcing his bid for pre-selection he had been subjected to rumours about his time running a series of Telstra shops before selling the businesses and claims that Telstra actually took the businesses off him.

In addition, neighbours of Mr Brooks’ motorcycle business had been telephoned to tell them not to trust Mr Brooks and a prominent local businessman approached one of Mr Brooks’ staff members to talk about blocking Mr Brooks’ political ambitions.

He described the situation as “ridiculous” and called for the problems within the party to be addressed.

Member for Gilmore, Joanna Gash said she was upset by the power play happening within the Liberal Party locally.

She said in her 16 years as a local member it had only been happening for the past five or six years.

“It’s not something I believe in and it has caused me some concern,” she said.

“It’s something I have tried very hard to avoid. It grieves me. It makes me feel very sad because ultimately it’s not in the best interests of anybody.”

Mrs Gash previously told the Times that the party had lost a good and creditable member in Cr Miller and that he would have made an excellent candidate.

Regular readers of the Times will have noticed some of the tensions in the Liberal Party coming out in its letters to the editor.

President of the South Coast Electorate Conference Phil Gregory recently called on Mrs Gash to “give the community a break”.

“We don’t need a self-appointed ‘mayor elect’ huffing and puffing about every community issue for the next eight months,” he wrote in February, signalling things were not exactly rosy in the Liberal camp.

It is now widely rumoured that Mrs Gash and pre-selection frontrunner Andrew Guile are bitter enemies.

It is also being suggested that Cr Guile started plotting to take Gilmore from Mrs Gash long before she announced her retirement and that it was the main subject of conversation at a 2009 dinner in Sydney attended by fellow councillors Gareth Ward, Nigel Soames and David Bennett, Member for South Coast Shelley Hancock and a number of other people.

It has now emerged that Mrs Gash and Member for Kiama Gareth Ward exchanged words in a heated argument at radio station 2ST last week over claims Mr Ward played a part in lobbying to have a planned ban on state MPs expanded to include Federal MPs.

The legislation is being pushed by current Shoalhaven mayor and MLC Paul Green and fellow MP Fred Nile.

Mrs Gash has suggested that CR Green is trying to pave the way for his wife Michelle to become Mayor.