The 1989 Wellington City mayoral election was part of the New Zealand local elections held that same year. In 1989, elections were held for the

Mayor of Wellington The Mayor of Wellington is the head of the municipal government of the City of Wellington. The mayor presides over the Wellington City Council. The mayor is directly elected using the Single Transferable Vote method of proportional representati ...

plus other local government positions including twenty-one city councillors. The polling was conducted using the standard

first-past-the-post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

electoral method.

Background

The 1989 local elections were the first following a major overhaul of local government in New Zealand. The existing

Wellington City Council Wellington City Council is a territorial authority in New Zealand, governing the country's capital city Wellington, and ''de facto'' second-largest city (if the commonly considered parts of Wellington, the Upper Hutt, Porirua, Lower Hutt and ...

remained in place but greatly expanded, absorbing several of the neighboring authorities including the Tawa Borough Council and land on the waterfront formerly in the possession of the

Wellington Harbour Board (Strong but true) , predecessor = , merged = , successor = , formation = , founder = , founding_location = , dissolved = , merger = , type ...

. The race for the mayoralty was bitterly fought with both sides of local politics in Wellington fighting internal divisions as well as each other. Mayor

Jim Belich Sir James Belich (25 July 1927 – 13 September 2015) was a New Zealand local politician. He was the mayor of Wellington from 1986 to 1992. Biography Early life and career Belich was born on 25 July 1927, of Croat descent, in Awanui, North ...

stood for a second term opposed by his former deputy

Helene Ritchie Helene Ruth Paula Ritchie (née Hess; born 16 March 1945) is a former local body politician, registered psychologist and mediator, and a board member from Wellington, New Zealand. As Wellington's longest serving City Councillor of over 30 years ...

who had left Labour after she was removed as deputy-mayor the previous year. The Citizens' Association also had rival candidates running against each other with Rex Nicholls running as the officially endorsed candidate with former Citizens' leader on the council David Bull and ex-councillor Roger Ridley-Smith running as an independent candidates after losing the nomination to Nicholls. As such, the race was characterised by

vote splitting Vote splitting is an electoral effect in which the distribution of votes among multiple similar candidates reduces the chance of winning for any of the similar candidates, and increases the chance of winning for a dissimilar candidate. Vote spl ...

and provided a very closely spread result. The council vote was likewise indecisive with no one group having control of the council. The Labour Party had lost its majority from three years earlier with the Citizens' Association winning a plurality and becoming the largest group on the council. 1989 also saw the emergence of the

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation ...

which won a seat on the council, the first third party to do so since

1977 Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic R ...

Stephen Rainbow Stephen Laurence Rainbow (born 26 January 1961) is a former New Zealand politician. He is manager of Auckland Transport's key relationships unit. Biography Early life Stephen Rainbow was born in Christchurch in 1961. He grew up on a tobacco fa ...

won a seat in the Lambton Ward and became the country's first ever Green councillor.

Mayoralty results

The following table gives the election results:

Results by ward

Rex Nicholls polled the highest in three of the seven of Wellington's

electoral wards The wards and electoral divisions in the United Kingdom are electoral districts at sub-national level, represented by one or more councillors. The ward is the primary unit of English electoral geography for civil parishes and borough and distri ...

while Jim Belich and Helene Ritchie each polled the highest in two.

Ward results

Candidates were also elected from wards to the

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wellington City Mayoral Election, 1989 Mayoral elections in Wellington 1989 elections in New Zealand Politics of the Wellington Region