Nelson's former deputy mayor is running as the Green Party candidate for the city in this year's general election.
Rohan O'Neill-Stevens was the youngest councillor to be elected to Nelson City Council in 2019 and in 2022 went on to serve a term as deputy mayor. They are currently the director of Arts Council Nelson.
Incumbent Nelson MP Rachel Boyack is standing for Labour again, and Blair Cameron is making his second run for the seat for the National Party.
Preliminary results in the 2023 election showed Cameron won the Nelson seat with a 54-vote lead, but final results after a judicial recount put Boyack in front with a 26-vote margin.
Transport advocate Jace Hobbs stood for the Greens in Nelson in the last election, gaining 6.5 percent of the candidate vote, while the Greens gained 14 percent of the party vote.
O'Neill-Stevens said their decision to stand for the Greens was driven by a belief the region deserved a government that put people and the planet ahead of corporate greed.
"I'm excited to bring my track record of collaboration, staunch advocacy and delivering tangible change to this election," O'Neill-Stevens said.
O'Neill-Stevens said there was more than enough in New Zealand for everyone to thrive, but successive governments had said people had to settle for less and less and that genuine change was not possible.
"Together we will build a movement that doesn't just change the government, but delivers transformational change by putting wealth and power in the hands of our communities."
O'Neill-Stevens said the coalition government was "more interested in stoking culture wars and undermining Te Tiriti than tackling the very real problems in front of us", while breaking down hard-fought environmental protections so multinational corporations could extract billions from shared resources.
"It doesn't have to be this way. We can choose a different path. We can choose our future."
They planned to campaign on policies to address the realities of working people and reach beyond the party's traditional base.
