Ann Court led a nail-biting race<\/a> to become Far North Mayor in the initial election-night count before Tepania pulled ahead as special votes were counted.<\/p>\nIn the final result, Tepania had 7805 votes to Court\u2019s 7362, a margin of 443 votes.<\/p>\n
Court said she was \u201creally happy\u201d with the results this time round.<\/p>\n
![\"Mayoral]()
Mayoral hopeful Ann Court was happy with her results this election. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
Court, who retained her seat in the Bay of Islands Whangaroa Ward with 3259 votes, said it\u2019s \u201cnot unexpected\u201d that Tepania was re-elected as mayor.<\/p>\n
She reached out to congratulate him \u201cwithin minutes of finding out the result\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoko\u2019s had three years as mayor, he\u2019s a charming, likeable guy and his heart is in the right place.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was never about Moko for me, I\u2019ve always really liked him, it was about what was happening within Far North District Council.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to stand up and fight for what you believe in and I did that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe results tell me I\u2019ve got huge public support so I\u2019m happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riley said he was \u201cimpressed\u201d that Tepania got the majority vote and wished him all the best.<\/p>\n
The Paihia businessman said he would now get back to running his online education company, which he put on hold while campaigning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a little disappointed with my own results but you never know until you try.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riley also stood for mayor in the 2022 election, gaining 2927 votes, as well as running for a councillor seat in the Te Hiku Ward.<\/p>\n
This time, the qualified commercial pilot also stood for the Bay of Islands Whangaroa Ward, but didn\u2019t make the cut after gaining 1318 votes. <\/p>\n
Newcomer Davina Smolders took the second spot on the Bay of Islands-Whangaroa General Ward, behind Court, and incumbent Deputy Mayor Kelly Stratford took the third and final seat.<\/p>\n
The Kaikohe-Hokianga General Ward seat was retained by John Vujcich and incumbent Felicity Foy was re-elected in the Te Hiku General Ward, alongside newcomer Rachel Baucke.<\/p>\n
In the Ng\u0101 Tai o Tokerau M\u0101ori Ward, incumbents Hilda Halkyard-Harawira and T\u0101mati R\u0101kena have been provisionally re-elected, alongside newcomers Chicky Rudkin and Arohanui Allen.<\/p>\n
Jenny Ling is a senior journalist at the Northern Advocate. She has a special interest in covering human interest stories, along with finance, roading, and social issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThere\u2019s a saying in Te Ao M\u0101ori; \u2018he kanohi kitea\u2019 [seeing is believing]. \u201cI\u2019m excited the people have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[836,36966,806,13242,36173,7797,528,2082,57920,1702,29137,56662,440,10934,43770,111,43,139,529,69,48426,13578,7676,56522,56639,530,57919,57918,1533,4576],"class_list":["post-73734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-836","tag-affordable","tag-as","tag-confirms","tag-continuing","tag-elections","tag-far","tag-for","tag-freshly","tag-infrastructure","tag-keeping","tag-landslide","tag-local","tag-mayor","tag-moko","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-priorities","tag-projects","tag-rates","tag-reelected","tag-reelection","tag-residents","tag-roading","tag-tepania","tag-will","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73734","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=73734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}