Whang?rei mayor Vince Cocurullo, who looks to have been tipped out on the latest vote count, is blaming “quite a strong hate campaign” that he says has driven away his voters.
He’s not been targeted because of his race, or gender, or sexuality – he claims it’s because he opposed fluoride in the town water supply.
Late voting around the country flipped the result against the incumbents in both Whang?rei and Whakat?ne on Sunday afternoon. And special votes may yet overturn the result in Kaipara too, where the heir apparent Jonathan Larsen is hanging on by just five votes. In a ratepayer rout, 33 of the country’s 66 city and district elections are on track to deliver new mayors and councillors this week.
That comes after the previous election, in 2022, that was almost as chaotic. There were 31 new mayors then; this time there looks to be 33. It means that most communities will have mayors with no experience in the role, or just a single three-year term.
Over the past 24 hours, Newsroom has analysed its big Local Elections Survey 2025 of 1000-plus candidates, looking just at the 422 who have been elected, on preliminary results.
Asked to place themselves on a left-right spectrum, economically, New Zealand’s new mayors, councillors and community board members are leaning more fiscally conservative than when Newsroom asked candidates the same question for the last local elections in 2022.
On a scale of 1 to 6 (where 1 is left and 6 is right) they rate themselves an average 3.7. Sixty-two percent of elected candidates describe themselves as right-of-centre economically, according to their responses.
This is not a randomised sample, so it’s not scientific – but it does come from a very large pool of more than a third of the 2900 people who stood for election.
What’s surprising about these Sunday afternoon results reversals is that while much of the country has embraced rates-cutting conservative challengers, the late upsets in Northland and Whakat?ne are going against that political tide. The challengers – Nándor Tánczos in Whakat?ne, Ken Couper in Whang?rei and Snow Tane in Kaipara – all come from the left of the incumbents.
In Auckland, right-of-centre C&R candidates have suggested the left-wing Labour candidates were getting their voters out late as a strategy. It’s not clear how this would be helpful, but it does seem the late votes have broken left in Northland and Whakat?ne.
Cocurullo tells Newsroom that, in his view, concern about rates rises and cost of living was only a small part of the explanation for his looming defeat. “That’s only one little component of it. I think the biggest part that people need to realise is the power of of people doing hate speech. There was quite a strong hate campaign done against me.”
Hate speech is usually defined by government agencies as the incitement of hatred against a group based on a shared characteristic, such as ethnicity, religion or sexuality.
But Cocurullo says what he suffered was because of his politics. “I’ve had a candidate specifically go out there and say that because we went against the Government on fluoride, that’s the reason why the Government’s not working with us. But ministers are working with us.”
Under his leadership, Whang?rei District Council defied a Ministry of Health directive to put fluoride in its drinking water this year, claiming the “world is turning around” on the issue of fluoride. Certainly, it’s true that Donald Trump’s anti-vaxx, anti-paracetamol Secretary of Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is also leading a drive against fluoride – but there’s scant scientific evidence to support Kennedy’s stance.
Cocurullo says he’s experienced threats, or at least, abusive behaviour. “They’ve questioned my leadership, my style, all that sort of stuff. But I don’t take any any notice of a lot of that sort of stuff. It’s what you would deem as hate speech – people telling you you’re a loser, that sort of stuff.”
Councillor Ken Couper succcessfully led the opposition to Cocurullo on fluoride; now he’s poised to take the mayoral chains from him too. “Personally, I have not seen anything that I would call hate speech at all; I think there has been strong debate,” Couper says. “If anyone has suffered hate speech, that’s a very terrible thing and I would never condone it.”
‘The writing’s on the wall. There’s the opportunity with a new council coming on, to focus on priority issues like infrastructure, especially water, and stop being distracted by M?ori wards and karakia.’
Snow Tane, Kaipara mayoral candidatenone
Just to the southwest in Kaipara, Cocurullo’s fellow-traveller Jonathan Larsen, who describes himself as “a sensible, centre-right person”, is hanging on to the mayoralty by a thread. He had been deputy to mayor Craig Jepson, the self-styled Trump of the North, with Jepson’s endorsement to succeed him as mayor. But that now looks uncertain.
In the past term, Jepson and the Kaipara council had made headlines for banning M?ori karakia at the start of council meetings (then backtracking under duress). “I don’t think I ever made any statement about whether I was lending support or not, but the whole thing was a total media beat-up,” Larsen now tells Newsroom. “Essentially, under Council’s standing orders, we have the ability to have openings and closings of meetings, and he chose not to have that.”
Last year, Kaipara was the first council to disestablish its M?ori ward. Jepson, Larsen and four other councillors voted to remove the ward, in a heated debate. “Journalists look for a story that will sell,” Larsen says. “So if they can sensationalise something, then maybe they will.”
Kaipara has a big M?ori population (about 20 percent) but has never had a M?ori mayor. Now, Larsen could lose his chance at the mayoralty to Snow Tane (Te Roroa, Ng?puhi, Ng?ti Wh?tua), the long-serving general manager at Te Roroa Development Group.
Larsen anticipates no tensions. “We’re all mature adults who will be working proactively together for the benefit of our ratepayers, and I certainly wouldn’t be allowing the conversation to be diverted back into that dispute from three years ago.”
Larsen says that if he is returned as mayor, no individual or race will get special treatment. “We are one community. We’re one blended community with multiple ethnicities. So if you continue down this track of trying to divide people up by the ethnicity, we just get more of the same that we’ve been having from the previous Labour Government’s initiatives.”
Both Larsen and Tane say they will work together civilly and constructively if they’re both returned to council – but right now it looks possible that Tane will win the mayoralty, leaving Larsen on the outer.
Tane’s taking nothing for granted. “It’s too close to call,” he says. “I’ve got some confidence. My team has got some confidence. But at the end of the day, it will be interesting to see where the special votes swing. Some people say they’re traditionally left. Some say they’re traditionally conservative. We’ll see.”
But he does believe the council’s stance on relationships with M?ori over the past three years has probably swung votes behind him. “The council has had an agenda. They’ve had a manifesto which is probably right-leaning and aligned with some of the political parties, whether it was conducive to the district or not.
“The writing’s on the wall. There’s the opportunity with a new council coming on, to focus on priority issues like infrastructure, especially water, and stop being distracted by M?ori wards and karakia.”
Original article online at: https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/13/latest-mayor-to-be-ousted-claims-hes-a-victim-of-hate-speech/