Editorial: Emphatic victories in our local electorates

Andrew Austin, Editor of Hawke's Bay Today.

Wow, what an election!!

And just when we thought the drama would be over, we now enter a period of days or even weeks of horse trading with kingmaker Winston Peters holding the cards.

At a local level, the results were fairly dramatic, with four candidates in our electorates making emphatic statements in winning their seats.

Most people were expecting Tukituki to be a very tight race as the Labour candidate Anna Lorck has worked hard in the electorate for the last three years. National's Lawrence Yule also had the baggage of the Havelock North water crisis hanging over him, but in the end he romped with a majority of just over 2700 votes.

Credit to Ms Lorck for narrowing her previous losing margin by more than 3700 votes. While Mr Yule is now poised for a successful parliamentary career, the future is uncertain for Ms Lorck.

She has ruled out running for the vacated Hastings mayor position, which her councillor husband Damon Harvey may well take a stab at. Whether Ms Lorck has the energy or motivation to take a third crack at the Tukituki seat remains to be seen.

For Labour's Stuart Nash it was a victory for hardworking electorate MPs. The Napier party vote was strongly blue, but voters of all political persuasions felt he represented them enough to give him their tick again.

While it was sad to see the demise of the Maori Party and the feisty Marama Fox, Meka Whaitiri deserved her victory as she has certainly proven herself to the people of her electorate.

Wairarapa is probably the biggest winner of the four electorates, with three MPS being elected. Alastair Scott did enough to hold on to his strongly-National seat, while NZ First's Ron Mark and Labour's Kieran McAnulty were high enough on the list to get into Parliament.