Local Election 2022 - The Recap
The good, the bad, and the ugly of the last three months of my life
First of all, thank you for your patience with my radio silence these past couple of months. I owe you some newsletters, but the upside is that they might be twice as interesting now!
2019 vs 2022
The most obvious difference between this year’s election and the last one is that I was elected! But we’ll get onto that later.
I’ve been asked a lot how this election compared to the previous one - it’s not necessarily better or worse, just different:
Only running for council this time, there were 15 candidate events for me in the west ward, whereas there were 55 west ward + mayoral events I attended in 2019.
Despite there being fewer events in general, more communities were getting involved: Waikato Queer Women, Glenview Community Centre, E tū Union, Save Our Trains and the NZ Rail Coalition, Public Service Association (via Vote Climate), and others. Some organised events but a lot of groups did surveys.
There were about the same number of candidates overall - but a consistent absence of candidates from events that I don’t think was as noticeable last election. There were two candidates for each of the wards and the mayoralty that I didn’t see at any events1, and certainly fewer candidates at daytime events (which I took annual leave to attend). Whether this is a shift towards a higher proportion of candidates who don’t have the privilege of time off during the day, candidates focusing on other campaign tactics, or hesitancy of being held accountable for the views they’d shared online, or something else again, I’m not sure.
Our voter turnout was down significantly - at one point only half of what it was in 2019, but finishing up at 28% rather than the 39% we achieved last time. I won’t rehash my thoughts on local election reform for you, as The Spinoff’s Toby Manhire has written an article almost2 directly from my brain in terms of changes we could make to improve local elections.
A different campaign for a different election
My 2019 campaign feels like it was a million years ago. It was pre-pandemic and before events like the anti-vaccination and anti-mandate occupation at Parliament grounds. This time I avoided organising large indoor gatherings due to COVID-19 precautions, which meant skipping the clothes swaps and pub quizzes that had been a staple of the previous campaign. Although New Zealand’s COVID-19 restrictions were loosening anyway, I had COVID-19 in July and couldn’t afford to get sick again, and it would have weighed heavy on my conscience if people had got sick from coming out to support me.
It was a challenge not to worry about the low voter turnout as we progressed through the final days. There’s no polling, no modelling, just guesses as to who’s been visible, who has set themselves apart, and who has that all-elusive ✨name recognition✨. I knew that our campaign had:
Buses with my giant face on them since early August running an exclusive Hamilton West route (honestly, #goals) - making the most of Kirikiriroa’s traffic congestion while also clearly supporting public transport.
More positive media coverage than any other non-mayoral candidate - mentioned in The Spinoff’s election hoarding review (putting my bachelor’s degree to good use 😎), and quoted in articles about candidates using Facebook (putting my master’s degree to good use 😎), youth issues (which was one of the only Hamilton-specific election pieces that questioned candidates), as well as Alison Mau’s column on the abuse politicians face.
Answered 10/12 surveys and questionnaires sent directly to me.
Over 2,100 individual website visitors to vote.louisehutt.com across the campaign period and we fundraised over $5,000 from individual donations (less than the $13,000 we fundraised in 2019 but still impressive during a cost of living crisis).
22,000 video views in the final weeks of the campaign - editing together clips from in-person events or even short segments of an answer to help include voters who couldn’t get out to in-person events. I think the Tiktok dance was my favourite though - just for putting some joy and laughter into the last days.
The hardest part of this election wasn’t the stress or the scrutiny3 - they come a close second and third - but my recovery from COVID-19. Getting COVID delayed our campaign announcement and the lingering COVID symptoms significantly impacted my endurance. I would often excuse myself from events to go take my inhaler after introductions - as even two minutes of public speaking would leave me breathless. I’m so grateful for the volunteers who got out and delivered 5,000 flyers across Hamilton West when I was barely managing to walk 100m without chest pain and feeling faint. It was a careful balance of doing everything I could to make sure I was elected, while also attempting to rest and allow my body to recover from this illness.
We passed the three-month mark of COVID recovery on the very same day of the election results, and I am slowly improving4. The TikTok dance near the end of the campaign was really pushing it at the time (we basically did it all in one take), but having had some real time to rest without the additional stress a campaign brings has made a difference. And when I really compare how I felt at the end of this election vs 2019, as bizarre as it sounds, I would still probably choose recovering from COVID-19 over the house we rented going up for sale and having open homes every weekend, then our tenancy ended with four weeks notice and needing to move house in the middle of the 2019 campaign, plus taking unpaid leave from my job at the time. Housing and income security make even having a pandemic illness much more bearable.
Being elected
So we made our way through the election. In 2019, I knew I would make a good councillor and I would probably enjoy the job a lot - but the odds for a first-time, 26-year-old candidate, against all incumbents restanding was fairly unlikely. By the last week, I really just wanted the election to be over - so to come 80 votes off being elected was a better result than I had imagined.
This time, I knew I could be elected. The last week was a blur of anxiety and waiting in limbo. I had a panic attack one night, explaining to my partner that the last time I was waiting on some big news at the end of the week, we were waiting for the news my uncle had passed away. My partner obviously pointed out that those two things could not be more different, but they were both outcomes that when it came down to it, I had little actual control over but I knew they would change my life5.
Then on Saturday 8th October at 3:48pm, I got the phone call - I have a rule of not answering unknown numbers on my personal phone but I made an exception on election day6. The emotional rollercoaster went:
Joy > crying > video call with my campaign team while half-crying > disbelief > trying to call my mum > sending fifty million text messages > panic as we waited to see who else had been elected > trying to call my mum again > seeing the email with the full results > relief > tweeting the news > receiving fifty million text messages > and then once again, trying to call my mum.
My mother was in fact at a table tennis tournament in Auckland and didn’t answer any of my six calls, so my friend Briar who lives nearby went down to the tournament with a sign:
I don’t think it sunk in until I took the oath at the swearing-in ceremony, and I don’t think it felt real till I was sitting in the council chambers at our first council meeting with a nameplate that said 'Cr Louise Hutt'.
Now, for some frequently asked questions:
How do you feel?
I’m tired from the huge amount of work that campaigning is but also relieved the election is over, and very, very excited about all the potential that being on council brings.
How have your first week/s at council been?
It’s a lot of information in a short amount of time - meeting people, remembering names and job titles, logins and devices, swipe cards and meeting rooms, and so many questions (like “how did I never notice the council chambers carpet is such an aggressive shade of red”). I’m grateful to have a fairly robust knowledge of what council does already and to have previous governance experience too - it definitely makes it less overwhelming (even if it is on a bigger scale than what I’m used to).
What does your life look like now?
I resigned from my day-job in the COVID-19 Directorate at Te Whatu Ora, so being a councillor will be my main job7. The next three months are really just an extended induction into the world of local government and as a big nerd, I'm looking forward to learning heaps.
Where to from here for my favourite email newsletter?
I know this was the question you’ve all been waiting for - you should only really expect more newsletters! Pre-election I was aiming for one a month, and hope to get back to that routine. I won’t always talk about elections and council, so do expect one on how lush my summer garden is at some point. I’m also curating a new newsletter with some friends about visions and aspirations for Hamilton as an urban city so hop on over here if that sounds like a bit of you.
And hey, thanks for being with me through all of this. I appreciate having all of you along for the journey 💛
Which I say only from the couple of all-ward events I attended, acknowledging I didn’t attend any east-only or Kirikiriroa Maaori ward-only events.
I don’t think we should follow Australia and make voting compulsory but I do think we should follow Australia and have sausage sizzles outside voting booths. All hail the Democracy Sausage! 🌭🙌
There was less overwhelming media attention for me this time (not running for mayor and also not having a 1,000-person live audience debate that was also broadcast online), but more targeted online harassment and more private scrutiny.
I walked all the way up the hill to the Te Kōpū Mānia o Kirikiriroa Marae at Wintec without needing to stop or taking my inhaler for the swearing-in ceremony - when I had needed to stop three times going to the Bike Waikato event (at a room nearby to the marae) and thought I was going to faint when I got there, four weeks earlier 💪😎
Outside of being elected, it’s been maybe one of the hardest years of my life. I crashed my bike in March, my uncle died in April, one of my high school teachers as well as my friend’s mum died in June, one of my university lecturers and a friend of mine died in July, then my partner and I got COVID. Not the best time for my old brain.
You get a phone call if you’re elected, and an email with the results if you’re not - so if you’re getting a phone call, you have an idea of what the results are before you answer it.
Being a councillor is technically a part-time job but Hamilton City Council pays enough that I don’t need another source of income (note: not all councils pay enough for this to be an option).