News
A new surprise has turned up in the Invercargill Mayoralty race - but it has a twist.
Nobby Clark’s brother is standing for Mayor in both the south and in Tasman, but under two different names.
Andrew Clark turned up on the list of nominations this week, and placards seen in his own Tasman district, confirm he’s also standing for Mayor up there as well - but as Maxwell Clark.
Mayor Clark says his brother has only been to Invercargill once in the 50 years he has lived there, and has always been referred to as Maxwell.
His official name was Andrew Maxwell George Clark, and the new mayoral candidate said, when contacted, that he was honouring their late father by using his first name.
Andrew went into an Invercargill council meeting last year and made some interesting comments supporting his brother, which embarrassed Mayor Clark, and as a result, he’s not endorsing his nomination at all.
Andrew was the second oldest in their family of seven children - Nobby being the oldest.
Andrew has stood in the Tasman electorate every election since 2013 and was based in Richmond, Nelson. The intensive care paramedic runs his own private ambulance service called MediMax.
He was actively looking for a place in the south to buy, and said he’d visited on many occasions in recent years.
Seeing an opportunity for a vacancy in the Invercargill mayoralty, Andrew said he’d been approached by people in Invercargill to stand, “because Nobby was standing down and because of all the good work he’s done here, they asked if I was interested?”
He said Invercargill has a great future and it was a great place to live, “and I’m fairly politically attuned, including listening carefully to what the public is saying.”
Andrew said he intentionally didn’t tell his brother he was standing until the nomination was accepted, “because I wanted to be seen as independent.”