Maureen Pugh

Pugh was elected to the Westland District Council in 1998 and served two terms before being elected as the district's first woman mayor in 2004, succeeding John Drylie.[3] In 2007 she was returned as mayor unopposed.[4] She stood down at the 2013 elections[5] and was succeeded as mayor by Michael Havill.[6]

While serving as mayor of Westland District Council, Pugh was accused of failure to declare a financial conflict of interest.[7][8]

In the 2014 general election Pugh contested the West Coast-Tasman electorate as the candidate of the New Zealand National Party.[9][10] Also ranked number 52 on the National Party list, she just missed out on winning a list seat.[11] Based on preliminary results, she would have entered Parliament,[12][13] but in the final results, National's proportion of the party vote reduced and the Green Party's Steffan Browning won the seat she would have taken.[11] Pugh remained first in line should a vacancy arise in a list seat held by a National Party MP during the 51st New Zealand Parliament, and following Tim Groser's resignation in December 2015 she was sworn in as a member of parliament on 9 February 2016 after the summer recess.[14]

In the 2017 general election Pugh had a higher ranking of 44 in the National Party list, and again preliminary results indicated that National had won enough seats (58) for Pugh to return to Parliament. However, the official count showed that National had won two fewer seats than the preliminary count indicated, meaning that Pugh did not return to Parliament. Due to her history of going in and out of parliament frequently due to special votes, Pugh describes herself as the 'Yo-yo MP'.[15] As before, Pugh was in line to enter Parliament if there were resignations, and in February 2018 Pugh and several other "next-in-line" list candidates attended National's parliamentary caucus meeting to help ease their transition into parliament should they enter.[16] In March 2018, Bill English resigned from Parliament and Pugh was declared elected as a list MP.[17][18]

National Party leader Simon Bridges, who was in office from 2018 to 2020, described Pugh as "fucking useless" in a phone call with Jami-Lee Ross that Ross released on Facebook in October 2018. After the release of the recording, Bridges apologised to Pugh.[19] Pugh later voted with the majority against Bridges in the May 2020 leadership election.[20]

During the 2020 general election, preliminary results again showed that Pugh would enter Parliament as a list MP, having lost the West Coast-Tasman electorate.[21] This time, final official results showed that she had retained her list seat.[22][23] On 10 November, following the release of the final results, the National caucus elected her as its Junior Whip.[24] Following the counting of special votes Pugh was confirmed as an MP. In line with previous elections she had been anticipating losing her seat once again and had already packed up her office belongings, which she had to have sent back to parliament.[25]