Cathy McGowan with her sisters and campaign media adviser Cambell Klose. Credit:Justin McManus McGowan is a force of nature herself. A Churchill Fellow with a long history of research and policy development in the agricultural sector, she told Mirabella that a group of local citizens, working under the banner Voice for Indi, were engaged in a social research project to investigate the depths of political disengagement in an electorate that had been a staunch conservative seat since Federation. ''The feeling was we had become a political backwater … and it was pointless to even care,'' she says. The idea was to find out what really mattered to locals, and also what bound them, such that a sense of identity and a long-term vision for jobs and sustainability could be drawn up. McGowan had teamed up with social researcher Alana Johnson - from a fifth-generation local farming family - to empower women in farming communities in Ireland and India. Now they were taking this work to the place they'd both grown up.

Sophie Mirabella, as Shadow Minister for Industry in her Parliament House office in 2011. Credit:Andrew Meares The result was to channel these dreams through their elected representative. It was an ambitious project given the division of Indi runs from the NSW border down to Marysville, and takes in the snowfields and towns of varied wealth and histories such as Beechworth, Benalla, Kinglake, Mansfield, Rutherglen, Wangaratta and Wodonga. ''It was a big conversation,'' says McGowan. But also a short one. ''Sophie wasn't interested,'' says Tony Lane, a public servant and convener of Voice for Indi, who was also at the meeting. ''It lasted 11 minutes. Sophie said, 'the people of Indi aren't interested in politics'.'' Mirabella, according to McGowan and Lane, also insisted she was across local issues. ''She said, 'There are three issues: cost of living, cost of living, cost of living.' And that was that.''

The meeting concluded with McGowan telling Mirabella a report on the group's findings would be ready by May, and they'd send her a copy. Mirabella's media adviser, Adam Wyldeck, was in the office but not at the meeting. However, he says Mirabella was told by McGowan that broadband and mobile blackspots were among issues of concern to locals - and that Mirabella had pointed out that ''jobs and cost of living were critical issues'' they'd failed to raise. ''There was no issue that Sophie was dismissive,'' says Wyldeck. By May, when the report was published, McGowan announced her candidacy as an independent, with the support of Voice for Indi. Somewhat cleverly, the group was never to become a party - because to do so would inevitably exclude large sections of the populace with long-held loyalties. Rather it would be a vehicle for everybody, regardless of political allegiance. ''The story of Voice for Indi was much bigger than this election,'' she says. Nationally, the big story here is the political death of Sophie Mirabella, one of the great haters in federal politics. Among Mirabella's memorable detonations was calling four members of her own party ''political terrorists'' when they advocated a more humane approach to asylum-seeking boat people. In July, retiring independent MP Tony Windsor told ABC's Insiders program that Mirabella ''is the nastiest - I reckon if you put it to a vote to all politicians, she'd come up No. 1''.

Mirabella's reputation for personal vindictiveness was taken so seriously that the early days of the Voice for Indi movement were akin to the formation of an underground resistance movement - with associated rumours that became a little weird. Hamish McMillan, 36, cattle and sheep farmer, and immediate past president of the Liberal Party's Benalla branch, heard that the plan to bring down Sophie Mirabella began as a ''secret women's group, meeting in a public library. They were carrying on like they were in fear of their lives. It sounded like witchery to me.'' McGowan says the early meetings, at Wangaratta Library, were attended by prominent members of local organisations and business people with government contracts. ''They were worried about retaliation if we went public too early. We had people who wished us luck but didn't want to get involved … they certainly didn't want to pin their flag to the mast in the early days.'' Cambell Klose, McGowan's media adviser, adds: ''When you're dealing with someone who sees personal reputations as fair game … that's scary.'' Last week, McGowan made news by calling on the media and politicians to refrain from putting the boot into Mirabella while she's down. Other members of her team have also been careful not to bad-mouth Mirabella during the campaign. In part because they were advocating a return to old-fashioned decency; and also because they understood that negativity and nastiness tends to backfire.

The fact is - and without downplaying the power of McGowan's positive posture - Mirabella played a big role in killing off her own parliamentary ambitions. Her role as an ideological party warrior won her some fans, but turned many others off. People like Hamish McMillan love Mirabella because ''she's tough and she won't back down from a fight''. Even Klose says his parents, small-business owners, ''are huge Sophie fans. Because she's so combative.'' Klose, who designed McGowan's social media campaign, including a crowdfunding project that raised $117,000, says that whenever Mirabella appeared in the media or at public forums, there was a spike in donations to Voice for Indi. ''One of the biggest spikes came after she appeared on [the ABC's] Q&A in July. We had money coming from as far away as Perth.'' Presumably these people didn't know McGowan, but they knew Mirabella, and here was an opportunity to see her gone. But it wasn't her nastiness so much that cruelled Mirabella with the people of Indi. It was her failure to get to know her constituents, and, late in her campaign, in a moment of panic, playing them for fools.

After Tony Windsor's ''nasty prize'' comment went viral, he told the Border Mail: ''My main interest is not so much about her, but that I don't think she's a good country member. I've seen her talk about country issues in Parliament and I don't think she gets it; it's pretty easy to see it's from a city perspective.'' Alana Johnson says rural politics is built around relationships: ''If you think it's all about the party machine, you lose people.'' McGowan says that Mirabella won fans - and votes - when and where she made the effort to meet people. ''I heard from people saying they voted for Sophie because she gave a talk at their children's school.'' But there wasn't enough of it, and many people saw her as a Melbourne lawyer who inherited a safe country seat, who had done little for the area because she was too busy making a big name for herself in Canberra. Worse, she saw the locals as peasants. Alex, 18, working at Kmart in Wangaratta, just voted for the first time. What do you think of Sophie Mirabella? ''Ah … not a fan.''

Why's that? ''Her demeanour. She looks down on everybody. So, you know, that's never good.'' Graeme Hochfeld, 66, milkman, starts work at 5am: ''You ask people what she's done for the area and they scratch their heads. I mean, OK, she's been in opposition for six years, and people can understand that. Where she's really let herself down is by not connecting with the rural people. That's where everybody's run out of patience.'' Hamish McMillan, who is infuriated at the idea that Indi could have an independent representative - ''the independents might have done all for their own little electorates, but they made nothing but a mess for the nation'' - says Mirabella had her achievements. He says she renegotiated the contract for making military uniforms for a local mill. She campaigned for irrigation rights for farmers. ''She's been a towering force in the dispute in the Murray-Darling Basin.'' However, Tony Schneider, a tree-changer from Melbourne, and current president of the Benalla Liberal branch said: ''I can't think of anything off the top of my head,'' when asked what Mirabella had materially gained for the electorate. ''Passionate, hard-working, so there's that,'' he said. In August, in what was perceived as a fit of panic - and at a time when Liberal Party headquarters had started pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into Mirabella's struggling campaign - she sent out a letter that claimed credit for winning a Headspace youth mental-health centre for the region. In fact, the hard lobbying had been done by a group of local activists, notably led by a former Albury mayor, Stuart Baker, whose teenage daughter had committed suicide.

''It was a stupid move,'' says Denis Ginnivan, a member of the Voice for Indi committee. ''The community knew who had done the work.'' Mirabella was similarly embarrassed when she claimed credit for successfully lobbying Simon Crean to build the $65 million Border Cancer Centre. Crean announced funding for the centre in May 2011. However, according to Dr Craig Underhill, clinical director at Hume Region Integrated Cancer Service, Mirabella may have written a few letters, but the lobbying was conducted by the local community. ''We were talking to Nicola Roxon, who was the health minister at the time. It was Roxon not Crean.'' In fact, Underhill says, Mirabella had made it clear that the region wouldn't get much health funding ''unless it became a marginal seat''. Rebecca McGowan, one of Cathy McGowan's eight sisters and a local GP, says the push to make Indi marginal had initially come from regional health professionals. She said there were parts of Africa ''that have better healthcare than is available in Indi''. If Sophie Mirabella manages to claw back enough votes to keep her seat, she'll be too busy servicing her now marginal electorate to devote the time and energy to a cabinet position - and last week told Tony Abbott to go ahead and form government without her.

The question hanging over Cathy McGowan is what she can hope to achieve as a lone voice in a lower house dominated by the Liberal Party. Loading Alana Johnson says: ''It would be foolish to underestimate Cathy … she has an amazing ability to bring people together. I'd expect that the seat will be eventually won by one of the major parties. The point is, whoever it is, they won't be able to take us for granted any more.'' Adam Wyldeck on Saturday said he would pass on Fairfax Media's request for an interview with Sophie Mirabella.