Nick Leggett

Early life

Leggett was born in Porirua City in 1979 and grew up in Whitby, Plimmerton, Papakowhai, and Paremata. He was educated at Paremata School and Tawa College, and then studied at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a BA in political science.

Professional life

Leggett worked as a real estate agent, specialising in commercial and industrial sales.

Local-body politics

Leggett was first elected to Porirua City Council as a councillor in 1998, when he was 19. He wanted to achieve better representation of younger people on council, as 75 per cent of the population were under 45 but nobody on council was. He was re-elected in 2001, but did not stand for election in 2004. In 2007, he was elected in the Porirua Northern Ward, coming second.

At the local-body elections in October 2010, Leggett contested the Porirua mayoralty as one of nine candidates. He was endorsed by the outgoing mayor of 12 years, Jenny Brash, as well as former mayor, John Burke. Leggett was successful with 5930 votes, his closest rival, incumbent deputy mayor Litea Ah Hoi, receiving 2973 votes. When he was elected, he became the youngest mayor in New Zealand at the time (although there have been younger mayors, including Norman Kirk, who was 30 when elected mayor of Kaiapoi in 1953). Leggett was re-elected Porirua mayor in 2013 with 9252 votes (76%).

Leggett served on the Porirua Community Trust from 2004 to 2007 and 2010 to 2013. In 2013, he was elected a member of the Capital and Coast District Health Board. Leggett enjoyed high approval ratings during his two terms as Porirua Mayor.

Although a long time member of the New Zealand Labour Party, Leggett has always stood as an independent candidate for local government. In April 2016, he resigned from the Labour Party to run for Mayor of Wellington as an independent; Justin Lester had already been selected as the official Labour candidate and it is against party rules for members to compete against officially endorsed candidates. Central to his launch campaign speech was a desire to put an end to the "bickering" and "palace politics" holding the Wellington City Council back and to facilitate a new Sports Museum and Virtual Reality Centre for Wellington. In August 2016, Labour Leader Andrew Little accused Leggett of being a "right-winger", alleging that his campaign manager for the Wellington Mayoral election was a well-known ACT Party figure. Leggett came second in the mayoral race, finishing about 6,000 votes behind Lester. Leggett then changed allegiance to the National Party later that year citing ideological differences with Labour's leadership and announced he intended to seek the National candidacy for the Mana electorate in 2017. Leggett later abandoned his plans to run for Parliament but stated he would still campaign for the National Party in the area.

Personal life

Nick Leggett currently lives in Johnsonville and is married to Emily Pita; they married in 2014. They have a son, Tane. In early 2011, Leggett underwent a lap band operation to combat issues surrounding obesity, and he subsequently reduced his weight from 110 kg to 79 kg.