Reg Boorman

Reginald George "Reg" Boorman (6 February 1935 – 30 October 2016) was a New Zealand politician of the Labour Party.

Boorman served in the Malayan Emergency in 1957 with the New Zealand Army.^[1]

His first marriage was to Carol McAlpine. His second marriage (in the 1980s) was to Pauline Moran. He had four sons.^[1]

He won the Wairarapa electorate in 1984, when he defeated Ben Couch.^[2] Following the 1987 election, he was defeated by Wyatt Creech after an appeal to the Electoral Court.

On election night 1987, Boorman won by a mere 11 votes, but this was reduced to one vote following a full recount. The single vote majority led to Boorman being nicknamed "Landslide" by his Labour Party colleagues and the media, and he used to quip that when he drove over the Rimutaka Hill to Wellington, he would "take his majority with him".^[3] National Party Candidate Wyatt Creech later challenged that result on the grounds that Boorman had violated new laws about election spending as a result of deducting the (then new) GST Tax amounts in his spending return, effectively reducing his declared spend by 10%. Creech also challenged more than 200 votes (on various grounds). The Electoral Court approved Creech's petition, and Creech won the electorate in 1988 with a majority of 34 votes (9994 to 9960).^[4] After Parliament, Boorman was a taxi driver, and one of his pick ups from Wellington was Creech, an occasion that they could both laugh about.^[3] After his defeat, his wife stood for Labour in the Wairarapa electorate.^[3]

He died at home in Whakatane on 30 October 2016, and was survived by his second wife.^[1]

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