Hutt City mayor Ray Wallace plans to spend a relaxing evening with family and friends to celebrate winning the mayoralty for the third time.
Progress results show Wallace to be thousands of votes in the lead with 98 per cent of returned papers counted.
He had 18,825, while the next highest contender, James Anderson, had 1814 votes.
Wallace said he was “very pleased with the result” and that it was “probably fair to say” once all votes had been counted, none of the other candidates were likely to creep up 18,000 votes.
“I’m a great believer in democracy so I was very pleased that there was an election. I think that’s really important for democracy, so it was good to have a number of candidates there. I thought the mayoral campaign went well, we had some good debates and discussion.”
Wallace was disappointed in the low voter turnout, “but that seems to be a pretty generic thing across the country”.
He wanted to acknowledge long-serving councilors who were leaving, and said he looked forward to working with new ones.
“Clearly we’re on track and that’s to rejuvenate and revitalise our city.”
To celebrate his win, he will be heading out for dinner, then having a few drinks with family and friends.
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