The Greens yesterday confirmed their candidates for the two southern city seats — as in 2023, Scott Willis will run in Taieri and Francisco Hernandez will run in Dunedin.
Both men are first term list MPs but Mr Hernandez harbours ambitions to change his status, telling the Otago Daily Times that the Greens would — for the first time — be campaigning to win the seat of Dunedin.
"For the Dunedin campaign, we’re doing something that we’ve not done before, which is asking for the candidate vote as well as the party vote," Mr Hernandez said.
"We do see Dunedin as a two-horse race between Labour and the Greens."
In 2023 Rachel Brooking held the seat, a traditional Labour stronghold, polling 17,111 votes — comfortably ahead of National candidate Michael Woodhouse (9131).
Mr Hernandez came third in the electorate race but the Greens ran a strong second on party votes — 11,449, to Labour’s 13,160.
The seat has long been an important one for the Greens, regularly ranking among its highest in terms of party votes, largely courtesy of its enthusiastic campus branch.
The Greens also historically do well in urban seats — the party holds Auckland and Wellington Central, and Rongotai, and also intends to try to win Christchurch Central in the upcoming November 7 election.
That makes Dunedin an obvious target.
However, Labour — the party the Greens will almost certainly need to do a deal with if they are to have any hope of forming a government after the election — may well not look favourably at being challenged in one of its traditional stronghold seats.
There is also the risk of the left-leaning vote splitting and the National candidate in Dunedin coming through the middle.
"We do know that in some aspects Labour don’t actually represent the radical traditions of the city and how the city likes to stand up for fairness," Mr Hernandez said.
"We do feel like that by having a contest and by actually representing the radical traditions that the city actually represents, that we can actually better represent what the people of this community want."
The current MP for Dunedin, Rachel Brooking, said she was not surprised that the Greens were taking her on, given the city’s history of electing progressive candidates.
"I don’t take anything for granted so I will be going all running a two ticks Labour campaign," she said,
"I hope people will vote both for Labour and for me and my record of speaking out on Dunedin issues and on environmental issues."
Ms Brooking’s majority is one of Labour’s largest, albeit on a low turnout.
National has won the party vote in Dunedin before (2014) but its effort in 2023 was not aided by it affronting its candidate Michael Woodhouse during the list ranking process.
National has yet to begin its candidate selection process for Dunedin for this election.
"I think Rachel understands that no one party owns any kind of seat and we understand that as well," Mr Hernandez said.
"I don’t think it’s disruptive to the relationship at all. If anything, it potentially serves the people of Dunedin by actually having a democratic contest because they’re not going to elect a National candidate now after everything that this government has done."
Mr Willis polled 3898 personal votes in Taieri in 2023, when running a purely party vote candidate.
The seat is currently held by Labour MP Ingrid Leary, who will be her party’s candidate again.
Mr Willis said that he would be running a "B+" campaign in Taieri, aimed at maximising the Green vote — which was 4581 party votes in 2023.
"We don’t run big, expensive campaigns because we don’t have the corporate support that Act New Zealand or National have, but we have the mobilisation of communities," he said.
"That’s ultimately more powerful."
mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz , Political editor
