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Nicola Grigg, the newly minted Selwyn MP, could have expected a landslide victory in one of the safest blue seats in the country.
And while her 5,000-odd vote lead was a comfortable majority, the margin of her closest rival took her by surprise.
“It just wasn’t what I was hearing on the floor.”
The National Party candidate, a former journalist who served as Bill English’s press secretary when he was prime minister, replaces retired MP Amy Adams.
JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON / Stuff
Selwyn MP Nicola Grigg, left, on the campaign trail in September with National Party leader Judith Collins.
Adams claimed victory in 2017 with 19,639 more votes than Labor candidate Tony Condon.
That majority was reduced by more than 14,000 votes this time, with Grigg getting 18,578 votes to Labor’s Reuben Davidson’s 13,635.
Meanwhile, the party’s vote for National in Selwyn was more than halved, from 26,003 in 2017 to 12,908 votes this time.
Grigg, 39, comes from agriculture and politics. She grew up on a sheep and beef farm on Mt Somers and her great-grandmother, Mary Grigg, became National’s first female MP when she was elected to the then Mid-Canterbury electorate seat in 1942.
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Grigg said he worked to build name recognition in the electorate by attending as many meetings as possible and knocking on “thousands and thousands of doors.”
“For a long time people said ‘don’t worry, you’ll be fine, it’s the safest blue seat in the country’ … but I never took it for granted because I was very aware that I was an unknown product. . “
Grigg said his instincts told him that the drop in support for National likely came from voters in the boroughs rather than rural voters.
On Facebook, he called the election result “bittersweet.”
She said StuffThe result reflected a desire for coherence in the face of Covid-19, he said, and Labor benefited from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s popularity.
Grigg said he supported national leader Judith Collins “100 percent” and was taking a “philosophical approach” to launching his parliamentary career in the wake of his party’s historic defeat.
He was inspired by his former boss, English, who faced a devastating defeat in the 2002 election.
“I still remember being asked, ‘Well, why are you going ahead’? And he said ‘because I always told my children that when they knock you down, you get up again.’
Grigg said National needed to “do well and do better.”
