{"id":121357,"date":"2025-11-06T16:45:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/121357\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T16:45:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:45:08","slug":"kaipara-election-recounts-end-as-new-council-set-for-swearing%e2%80%91in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/121357\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaipara election recounts end as new council set for swearing\u2011in"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kaipara faced recount requests from mayoral candidate Snow Tane<\/a> and would-be councillors Ash Nayyar and Mark Vincent.<\/p>\n

Outgoing councillor Vincent was the final of the trio to hear the outcome of his application yesterday \u2013 his application was declined by Judge Kevin Kelly.<\/p>\n

Kelly declined Vincent\u2019s application, saying he was not satisfied there were reasonable grounds to believe the election result declaration was incorrect.<\/p>\n

Just two votes from Vincent\u2019s Otamatea general ward\u2019s 4018 votes separated him from retaining a KDC seat for a third term \u2013 the smallest margin of New Zealand\u2019s four candidate judicial recount applications.<\/p>\n

Vincent said he was disappointed with the outcome.<\/p>\n

However, he said he was looking to the future and would support the two elected Otamatea candidates, Mike Schimanski and Denise Rogers.<\/p>\n

Vincent became known for wearing his Mickey Mouse T-shirt to council meetings<\/a> halfway through the last term.<\/p>\n

The T-shirt expressed his concerns over money from the sale of Ruawai\u2019s historic Raupo Drainage Board building going into the council\u2019s general coffers for rates reduction, rather than back to the drainage area for improvement of its infrastructure.<\/p>\n

He said he looked forward to seeing how the council fared in the next three years.<\/p>\n

Progressive election results showed the vote change between Rogers and Vincent.<\/p>\n

On October 11, the election progress results had Vincent 52 votes ahead of Rogers, but the next day\u2019s preliminary results had him 10 votes ahead of her.<\/p>\n

However, by October 17, final results showed he was two votes behind Rogers.<\/p>\n

Vincent said Otamatea\u2019s results showed the importance of every vote.<\/p>\n

He would not be drawn on whether he would seek a seat on the council again in the 2028 local elections, other than to say he was considering his options for the future.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, new Kaipara Mayor-elect Jonathan Larsen<\/a> said it was good the final judicial recount bid had been resolved.<\/p>\n

\"KaiparaKaipara Mayor-elect Jonathan Larsen.<\/p>\n

He looked forward to Wednesday afternoon\u2019s formal swearing-in ceremony and first council meeting at Matakohe War Memorial Hall.<\/p>\n

Once sworn in, the newly-elected council will be able to take over the council helm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people of Kaipara have elected a talented team of councillors who are all committed to working for the benefit of the district and I look forward to working with all of them,\u201d Larsen said.<\/p>\n

KDC\u2019s nine-person governance table will be Mayor Larsen, Deputy Mayor Lambeth and councillors former mayor Craig Jepson, Luke Canton, Nathan, Denise Rogers, Mike Schimanski, Tane and Rachael Williams.<\/p>\n

KDC cut its top-table numbers from 10 to nine for the current term, after canning its Te Moananui o Kaipara M\u0101ori ward.<\/p>\n

It now has three general council wards instead of four, including the M\u0101ori ward.<\/p>\n

With the mayor, there are three council seats representing the Wairoa general ward, two for the Otamatea general ward and three in the Kaiwaka-Mangawhai general ward.<\/p>\n

Mayoral hopeful Snow Tane was the first KDC candidate to seek a judicial vote recount.<\/p>\n

His recount bid failed<\/a> on October 24, after he came in just 21 votes behind Mayor-elect Jonathan Larsen.<\/p>\n

However, he is now newly elected to the council after also standing as a Wairoa general ward councillor and achieving a landslide win there.<\/p>\n

Dargaville\u2019s Ash Nayyar was the third to fail in his recount bid for a councillor position. He was sixth-ranked in Wairoa general ward for the ward\u2019s three seats \u2013 187 votes behind the lowest-scoring of the three incumbents, now Deputy Mayor-elect Gordon Lambeth.<\/p>\n

\u25a0 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kaipara faced recount requests from mayoral candidate Snow Tane and would-be councillors Ash Nayyar and Mark Vincent. Outgoing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,806,83629,5205,7558,7557,5903,8127,2082,3464,85330,23157,685,117,111,65260,43,139,1536,4061,69,18481,13992,85328,1551,85329,19347,686,1533],"class_list":["post-121357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-as","tag-bids","tag-council","tag-councils","tag-district","tag-election","tag-end","tag-for","tag-formally","tag-inaugurate","tag-kaipara","tag-last","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newlyelected","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-number","tag-nz","tag-politicians","tag-recount","tag-recounts","tag-set","tag-swearingin","tag-unprecedented","tag-week","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}