National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis will be the party’s candidate for Ōhāriu. Photo / Greg Bowker
National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis will be the party’s candidate for Ōhāriu. Photo / Greg Bowker
Wellington is a sea of red electorates but two of National’s most senior MPs are staking their reputations on loosening Labour’s grasp on the region.
National’s deputy leader Nicola Willis has been confirmed as the party’s candidate for Ōhāriu. She has previously run in Wellington Central, which is a safeLabour seat held by Finance Minister Grant Robertson.
Why the switch? To put it simply, Ōhāriu is actually potentially winnable for National because it doesn’t have the same history as a Labour stronghold.
United Future leader Peter Dunne represented the people of Ōhāriu for 33 years before polling in the 2017 election showed he was trailing behind Labour’s candidate and now local MP Greg O’Connor.
Dunne added his name to the list of shock resignations that election, putting National in an awkward position.
The party had already directed its supporters to vote for Dunne, and its candidate Brett Hudson had included this message on his campaign leaflets.
Dunne’s departure was undoubtedly a blow for National, which had relied on his vote in Parliament to help achieve a majority.
Hudson then had to campaign on two ticks blue at the last minute and lost to O’Connor by 1051 votes. The margin between the two was increased to almost 12,000 in the red wave that was the 2020 election.
Enter Willis, who has quickly climbed National’s ranks since coming in as a list MP in 2018.
She’s clearly pitching to young families in Ōhāriu and has said that as a mother of four young children herself, she feels a strong connection to parents who are worrying about the cost of living and the future of their kids.
Willis has also been quick to acknowledge the incumbent’s strong majority that will be a “steep hill to climb”.
But it’s less of a hill than the 18,878 vote majority Robertson has secured over Willis in Wellington Central.
As for why she’s ditching Wellington Central? Willis has said she loved campaigning there but sees a significant opportunity for National to grow its vote in Ōhāriu.
There is also an opportunity for her to become an electorate MP.
National MP Chris Bishop with new MP Tama Potaka who flipped the Hamilton West seat in the recent byelection. Photo / Mike Scott
O’Connor has the advantage of incumbency, although Willis also has a profile from the get-go thanks to her deputy leader role.
He could up the stakes like he did last time by running electorate only, which made his bid for the seat an all-or-nothing campaign.
Willis is already out and about in the electorate attending the Rotary Khandallah Fair over the weekend and holding a public meeting in Johnsonville with National Party leader Christopher Luxon last Thursday.
A win is no slam dunk for Willis, but it’s not impossible either.
Ōhāriu shares a border with the Hutt South electorate where Chris Bishop, ranked third on the National Party list, will go head-to-head with the Labour incumbent Ginny Andersen.
The margin here is tighter and the rivalry between these two politicians spans several years.
Labour’s Trevor Mallard had held the seat since it was formed under MMP in 1996, but ran list-only in the 2017 election with the intention of becoming Speaker of the House.
Bishop went on to win the seat by a margin of 1530 votes over Andersen, turning the seat blue for the first time in its history.
But Bishop was not immune to the bloodbath that was the Covid-19 election of 2020 and lost the seat to Andersen by a margin of 3777 votes.
He has his hands full already being Shadow Leader of the House, National’s campaign chair for the upcoming election, and party spokesman for housing and infrastructure.
There are a lot of priorities for Bishop and winning back Hutt South will be high on the list.
Bishop has strong ties to the Hutt Valley having been born and raised there and is currently building a house in Eastbourne.
This battle will be a real nail-biter and will put Andersen’s 2020 majority to the test now that the Government’s early track record on Covid-19 is but a distant memory and the cost of living crisis is starting to bite.
Looking further afield, both the Wairarapa and Ōtaki electorates also flipped from blue to red in the last election.
Labour MP Kieran McAnulty had a more convincing majority of 6545 votes in the Wairarapa than Labour MP Terisa Ngobi’s 2988 vote win in Ōtaki.
It wasn’t that long ago that the election at a local level in Wellington felt like a foregone conclusion, but 2023 is set to be one to watch.
It’s possible some blue islands will emerge in the sea of red.
• Senior Wellington journalist Georgina Campbell’s fortnightly column looks closely at issues in the capital.
