Michael Laws will not be drawn on whether he is to run for Parliament at this year\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n
Speculation began last night when social media posts suggested that Cr Laws, an Otago regional councillor, is to be announced this Friday as New Zealand First\u2019s candidate for the Waitaki electorate.<\/p>\n
On his radio show on The Platform earlier this week, Cr Laws alluded to a pending announcement, without giving details.<\/p>\n
He lives in Cromwell, which is in the Waitaki electorate.<\/p>\n
Were he to stand, he would be running against sitting National MP Miles Anderson, in an electorate that has been a National stronghold for decades.<\/p>\n
Cr Laws today declined to comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never comment on rumour or speculation. It only encourages them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The party\u2019s previous Waitaki candidate has confirmed he is no longer standing.<\/p>\n
Stuff approached NZ First leader Winston Peters in Parliament yesterday to ask if Cr Laws was to run.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you talking about, why are you asking me?\u201d Peters told Stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the leader of New Zealand First, we don\u2019t handle this kind of basic stuff – that is handled by the party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cr Laws began as an MP with National in 1990 and resigned six years later after defecting to New Zealand First.<\/p>\n
He later served as Whanganui mayor between 2004-2010.<\/p>\n
He has been on the Otago Regional Council since 2016.<\/p>\n
Labour list MP and former West Coast\/Tasman MP Damien O\u2019Connor is also standing in the Waitaki seat.<\/p>\n
The general election will be held on November 7.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Laws will not be drawn on whether he is to run for Parliament at this year\u2019s general…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-503150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503150","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=503150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}