The Lower Hutt Citizens' Association, was a

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-leaning

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electoral

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Lower Hutt Lower Hutt ( mi, Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai) is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand. Administered by the Hutt City Council, it is one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington metropolitan area. It is New Zealand's sixth most p ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. It was formed in 1945 by merging the selection process of council candidates of several civic interest groups and business lobby groups. Its main ambitions were to continue to control the Lower Hutt City Council, reduce local spending and deny

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right * L ...

-leaning Labour Party candidates election.

History

The Citizens' Association was formed on a permanent basis in 1945, growing out of the Ratepayers' Association which was founded in 1905. Previously electoral tickets had existed only at election periods where candidate tickets were formed by ratepayer groups but had no permanent infrastructure and was inactive outside election periods. From the 1930s on, the Labour Party had been steadily winning more votes in local elections and it was thought an opposing ticket was necessary to defeat them. Similar associations of citizens and ratepayers had existed in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

and other cities in New Zealand on which Lower Hutt modelled theirs on. The party system in local politics in Lower Hutt was upended as a result of the 1971 election after the Citizens' Association did not select incumbent mayor

John Kennedy-Good Sir John Kennedy-Good (8 August 1915 – 11 July 2005) was a New Zealand politician. He was mayor of Lower Hutt from 1970 to 1986. Biography Early life and career Kennedy-Good was born in 1915 in Goulburn, New South Wales, where his father was ...

as their candidate at that years election. Kennedy-Good had been elected by councillors (where the Citizens' had a majority) as mayor in December 1970 for the remainder of the term after the death of Labour mayor

Percy Dowse Percy Dowse (4 December 1898 – 9 December 1970) was a New Zealand politician. He was mayor of Lower Hutt from 1950 to 1970. Biography Early life He was born in Lancashire in 1898 and was educated at Wigan Technical College. His coal miner fat ...

but the Citizens' selection committee chose the deputy mayor Dave Hadley to contest the 1971 election. Undeterred, Kennedy-Good formed his own "combined" electoral ticket with which to contest the election. The Citizens' performed poorly at the election where Hadley came a distant third (Kennedy-Good narrowly beat Labour's

John Seddon John Seddon is a British occupational psychologist and author, specialising in change in the service industry. He is the managing director of Vanguard, a consultancy company he formed in 1985 and the inventor of ' The Vanguard Method'. Vangua ...

) and only won three of the fifteen council seats. The Citizens' Association made peace with Kennedy-Good by the 1974 election and by 1980 his combined ticket merged back in to the association as the "United Citizens" ticket which won all but one seat on the council at that years election. The unity was short-lived however and another split occurred in the lead up to the 1986 election when Gerald Bond, a councillor and chairman of the Hutt Valley Energy Board, formed a "combined progressive" electoral ticket after losing the United Citizens nomination for mayor to

Glen Evans Thomas Glendwr Gardner "Glen" Evans (22 April 1936 – 24 August 2016) was a New Zealand politician. He served as the mayor of Lower Hutt from 1986 to 1995. Biography Early life and family Born in Bedford, Bedfordshire, England, on 22 April ...

. The United Citizens won in a landslide with majority of councillors and Evans winning the mayoralty against Labour councillor Alister Abernethy. Bond came a distant third for mayor and lost his council and energy board seat. All of his ticket (which included several incumbents) were defeated. Evans was expecting a closer result and had thought Bond would be a close second.

Notes

References

* *{{cite book , last=McGill , first=David , title=Lower Hutt – The First Garden City , publisher=Lower Hutt City Council , year=1991 , location=Petone, New Zealand , isbn=1-86956-003-5 Politics of the Wellington Region Political groupings in New Zealand