1971 Lower Hutt mayoral election

The 1971 Lower Hutt mayoral election was part of the New Zealand local elections held that same year. The elections were held for the role of Mayor of Lower Hutt plus other local government positions including fifteen city councillors, also elected triennially. The polling was conducted using the standard first-past-the-post electoral method.

1970 mid-term election
Mayor Percy Dowse died mid-term on 9 December 1970. Rather than hold a by-election the city council members decided to elect a councillor to finish the remainder of the term until the scheduled election 10 months later. The council special meeting was held on 21 December. Councillor Chen Werry was nominated by Wally Bugden and seconded by Jessie Donald but he unexpectedly declined nomination. Cyril Phelps then nominated John Kennedy-Good which was seconded by Harold Meachen and finally the deputy mayor Dave Hadley was nominated by Ted Holdaway and seconded by Don Lee. A vote was held among the councillors by a show of hands. A visible split was seen with Citizens' Association councillors, splitting support between Hadley and Kennedy-Good, with Labour councillors (who were the minority on the council) all voting for Kennedy-Good who won nine votes to six.

A list of each Councillors vote:

October 1971 election
Even after councillors elected Kennedy-Good as Dowse's successor the Citizens' Association, who had a majority on the council, did not select Kennedy-Good for the 1971 election. Instead they chose the deputy mayor (and 1968 candidate) Dave Hadley instead. As a result Kennedy-Good formed his own "combined" electoral ticket, consisting of candidates who were previously Citizens' and Labour affiliated, with which to contest the election. Thinking that the Labour Party was not intending to put up a ticket of their own, four Labour councillors joined the combined team. Labour did eventually decide to run its own ticket and party policy dictated that members could not stand for election against official party candidates resulting them having their Labour membership suspended.

In an evenly divided poll Kennedy-Good narrowly edged out former Labour councillor John Seddon to win the mayoralty. The city council was split three ways, with Labour winning a plurality of seats. Labour and Citizens' councillors made a deal to elect their own members to committee chairs and voted Seddon as deputy mayor, sidelining the Combined Team.

At the election both a father and son were elected to the council. Chen Werry was re-elected to the council on the combined ticket while his son, Dick Werry, won a seat on the Labour ticket. It also saw the election of the city's first ever Indian councillor, Govind Bhula, a civil engineer originally from Bombay.