Auckland Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson not ruling out Auckland mayoralty bid

Auckland Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson isn’t ruling out a tilt at the city’s top job.

Earlier today the Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance revealed the domain “Desleyformayor.co.nz” was registered by her son last year.

Desley Simpson is the deputy mayor of the Super City.

Simpson told the Herald her son registered the domain at Christmas “as a bit of a laugh” and she hasn’t decided whether to stand for mayor.

But she’s not ruling it out.

Straight off a 27-hour flight from Europe on Thursday afternoon, she told the Herald, “I’ve been busy having a holiday”.

She confirmed she has been thinking about running for mayor but it’s “a bit soon” for a decision.

Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson and Mayor Wayne Brown. Behind them are councillors Alf Filipaina, Lotu Fuli and Shane Henderson.

“It was a bit of a Christmas laugh. It doesn’t mean I’m doing it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not doing it either.”

Mayor Wayne Brown told the Herald: “I only heard about it very recently”, and he hasn’t spoken to her yet. This afternoon he was not available for further comment.

National leader Christopher Luxon was asked if his party would endorse Simpson if she stood. He told the Herald he wouldn’t confirm or deny.

Who is Desley Simpson?

Simpson was born into a life of privilege in Remuera and attended Diocesan School for Girls where her mother, Leonie Lawson, was head of music.

Her first marriage was to Scott Simpson, the National MP for Coromandel. They separated in 2004 and in 2008 she got together with richlister and soon-to-be National Party president Peter Goodfellow.

Simpson’s rise to deputy mayor began chairing the Hobson Community Board in the pre-Super City era, followed by six years as chair of the Ōrākei Local Board before being elected to Auckland Council in the Ōrākei ward in 2016.

Then-mayor Phil Goff appointed her deputy chair of the finance and performance committee. She became chair of the finance committee in Goff’s second-term line-up.

Simpson was reelected in a landslide in the 2022 elections and selected by incoming mayor Wayne Brown to be deputy mayor.

Announcing his choice, Brown said Simpson was “universally admired for her integrity, professionalism and loyalty, and her ability to get things done through the council bureaucracy and committee processes”.

“Desley and I are going to be a great team,” he said.

Accepting the role, Simpson said, “we’re very different people” – adding she was “naturally more conciliatory” than Brown.

“We’re not short of knowing where the mayor comes from.

“Look, the way this is going to work is His Worship is the mayor, he has very obvious ideas and he’s been quite articulate in those ideas and I think it’s my job to help him populate those ideas around the elected members and find a consensus with everybody really.”

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