{"id":649227,"date":"2026-11-02T23:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T23:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/649227\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T23:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T23:50:10","slug":"election-2026-nicola-willis-never-contemplated-running-in-safe-national-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/649227\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: Nicola Willis never contemplated running in safe National seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicola Willis – who is at risk of not making it back into parliament on the National Party list under current polling<\/a> – says she never contemplated running in the safe seat of Kaipara ki Mahurangi.<\/p>\n

It’s a seat previously held, under a different name, by former leader and prime minister Sir John Key.<\/p>\n

Asked by RNZ on Tuesday if she’d considered it, Willis said running in the seat was never an option for her.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got four kids: three in secondary school, one in primary school, and so moving to Auckland, it wasn’t an option for my family.<\/p>\n

“But more to the point, I wanted to see that community represented by the best representative possible, and I’m confident that we selected a candidate who will do just that,” she said.<\/p>\n

“If New Zealanders want to see National leading the next government, we need their party votes. And I’m out campaigning for party votes across the country. It’s a really important job for our party and for our country.”<\/p>\n

Former National Party finance minister and deputy leader Bill English lived in Wellington while holding the seat of Clutha-Southland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nicola Willis – who is at risk of not making it back into parliament on the National Party…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-649227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649227","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=649227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}