How Labour will find a new candidate for Napier

The last time Labour had more than one nomination for its Napier candidacy was 15 years ago. Stuart Nash, pictured at the time with supporters at a quiz night, missed out on the nomination, but became a List MP.

The chairman of the Labour Party’s Napier electorate committee expects a new candidate for this year’s election to be in place by early next month.

Speaking following the announcement of MP Stuart Nash’s decision to stand down from politics, electorate chairman Mark Cleary, a former high school principal, said that while he’d give departing MP Nash “more than a pass mark - an A-plus”, the committee had for the last week been preparing for the decision by Nash either way, following the loss of his roles in the parliamentary Cabinet of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.

Cleary confirmed it was Nash’s decision alone as to whether or not to continue as a candidate to seek re-election in Napier, a former Labour Party stronghold wrestled back by Nash when he won the seat in the 2014 general election following the departure of three-term National Party MP Chris Tremain.

“There was no pressure for him to [resign as candidate],” Cleary said. “I am full of admiration for him. He’s very hard-working, he’s very diligent. He does all the reading. He’s very well-briefed.”

He said public comments he’s seen in support of the work done by Nash “far outweigh” any other comments.

The party had confirmed about two months ago that Nash would be the Napier candidate, as he had been since 2011.

The 55-year-old had stood as the party candidate in the safe National seat of Epsom (now the preserve, in National absentia, of Act leader David Seymour) in 2005 and in 2008, having unsuccessfully challenged MP Russell Fairbrother for Labour’s Napier nomination.

Fairbrother had been elected as Napier MP in 2002, after the retirement of seven-term MP Geoff Braybrooke, and had been a Labour List MP since 2005, after Tremain and National brought about Labour’s first general election loss in Napier in 54 years.

“This is all very sudden,” Cleary said, emphasising that the Labour electorate committee had been preparing for a campaign with Nash as its candidate, and it hadn’t had to go through the full selection process with more than one nomination since that 2008 decision.

Cleary said the party has a strong membership base in Napier - “we’re aware of who our members are” - and he expects there will be interest from some who have parliamentary aspirations, including Hawke’s Bay people who live elsewhere, although it’s too early to say where a selection process will need to take place.

The party is expected to call for nominations, and if there are more than one, a selection process will take place, with the preferences of the party’s national council and the local electorate committee each counting for four votes.

Members, including members of four affiliated traded unions, could then take part in a selection-meeting “floor” vote for a preferred candidate, but their selection stands as just a single vote in the process.

While there will be rumours of who might be in line, the identities of nominees are confidential, at least until the closing of nominations.