Democrats for Social Credit MPs
Garry Knapp and Neil Morrison - Acolytes of Bruce Beetham who entered Parliament in the 1980 East Coast Bays election and the 1984 general election respectively, this pair saw that Labour's turn to the Right was a threat to their own electability, and spent the mid-80s triangulating the Social Credit Party for a new era. First, there was a rebrand in favour of the shiny new NZ Democratic Party. Then, the elder statesman Beetham was removed as leader in favour of Morrison, and under his leadership the party moved to the Left of Labour, while also claiming to have been the first party in NZ with an environmental policy, and thereby appealing to former Values supporters. In 1987, the tactic paid off, and although Morrison lost his seat due to boundary changes, Knapp held on and succeeded Morrison as Leader. The new radicalism of the Democratic Party saw its apotheosis in 1988, when Knapp and some supporters staged a three-day sit-in of Parliament to fight for Proportional Representation. To no avail, except for a moderate surge in the polls up to 1990.
Terry Heffernan - Entering Parliament on a split vote in 1987, Heffernan soon made himself at home, working across the aisle with Winston Peters in exposing corruption and deceit. He had a faultless memory, which he used not only to memorise the Parliamentary Standing Orders (he was acclaimed as the best Speaker we never had) but also to ruthlessly point out inconsistencies and take a few ministerial scalps. Taking over from Knapp as leader upon the latter's defeat, his early promise foundered upon the twin rocks of Peters (now leader of the Liberal Party) and Palmer, who crowded out the electoral field in 1993 to the Democrats' detriment. Heffernan lost his seat in 1996, when new PM Mike Moore swept all before him.
Stuart Perry and Alasdair Thompson - Both were more right-wing than Heffernan and Knapp, and took their rural electorates after several gritty battles with National incumbents. Both suffered from foot in mouth syndrome (Thompson once stated that women get paid less than men because they tend to take sick leave according to the lunar cycle) and both were unseated by Liberal vote-splitting in 1993. The party of Winston Peters, Michael Laws, and Hamish MacIntyre kept the seats of the first two in the election, but split the conservative vote so thoroughly that the group was subsequently readmitted to the National Party with open, pleading arms. Perry is now in local politics while Thompson has served as CEO of the Employers and Manufacturers Association.
Tau Henare - He had also offered to run for Mana Motuhake, but was convinced to join by Heffernan, who was desperate for a Maori face to broaden the appeal of the largely Pakeha party. Henare's disloyalty was predictable in hindsight: Bill Birch tempted him over along with the Liberals by making him Shadow Minister of Maori Affairs.
John Wright, Jan Davey and Richard Prosser - In 1994, when Ruth Richardson resigned from Parliament over the readmission of Winston Peters to the National caucus, the Democrats had not won a by-election since 1980 and had never won a South Island seat at all. This changed in the rural seat of Selwyn, where Wright, the owner of a Port-a-Loo company, edged past National by taking protest votes from Ron Mark of Labour, and also Values and Christian Heritage. He failed to hold the seat in the next general election, but the nearby Christchurch seat of Fendalton fell to Jan Davey, a more pleasant character than Wright who diverted a lot of his volunteers for her own campaign. Wright, having experienced difficulty finding a job outside of politics, now went on the warpath. He spent the next three years on a quest to discredit Davey, and finally succeeded in having her deselected in his favour by the increasingly weary Heffernan. Aware that Wright would never let the grudge lie, Davey decided not to contest the ruling, and Wright somehow found time to campaign in the actual election and re-entered Parliament. For one term. Fortunately for him, there was another by-election in Selwyn upon the resignation of Brian Connell in protest at the leadership of John Banks, and Wright one once more, this time on a low plurality. Nevertheless, he built up a solid base of support there in the more mature chapter of his career, and eventually led the party from 2007 to 2010, after winning his fourth attempted leadership coup. Eventually, Wright handed the Selwyn electorate to his chosen successor, anti-PC columnist and South Island Independence agitator Richard Prosser, who got the Party's first policy win in a long while when his Commerce (Electricity Pricing (South Island)) Bill was drawn from the biscuit tin. After several bigotry scandals, Prosser was defeated in 2014.
Heather-Ann McConachy - In civilian life, she is an artist and environmentalist, but her life has been dominated by Social Credit. Her father was only 500 votes of election in Kaipara in 1978, and in 1996, she reaped the dividends of two cycles of electioneering in Gary Knapp's old electorate in the North of Auckland. As Terry Heffernan had been unseated by Labour in the same election, McConachy became the Democrats' first female leader at the next party conference. She struggled to get her message across at first, having not previously possessed a public image, and in this phase of the party's history, it became very much a machine to elect MPs rather than an ideological party. Wright's Canterbury machine rumbled on almost unconnected with the North Shore operation, only coming into contact when Wright tried to stack conferences with his own people to try to oust his Leader.
John Pemberton - A third, minor electoral organisation existed in the Waikato, and procured the election of John Pemberton, a biosecurity officer on his third serious attempt. He is only notable for giving the tie-breaking vote for Keith Locke's Environmental Protection Bill in 2004, an action which bolstered the green-left wing of the Labour Party, encouraged them to challenge Cosgrove's leadership, and thereby contributed to their third consecutive defeat in the following year's election.
Grant and Paula Gillon - McConachy stepped down in the (now extremely safe) East Coast Bays electorate in 2005, making way for the young Paula Gillon. This selection was criticised in the press and in the Wrightite right-wing of the party, principally because Gillon's father was already an MP - the North Shore machine had got him elected in Glenfield in 1999, spreading green and gold across North Auckland. He was Leader of the Party from 2003 until his defeat by John Wright four years later, who criticised the fact that, from the time of his daughter's selection to Wright's victory in the second Selwyn by-election, the Democratic caucus was entirely a family affair. Eventually, these criticisms filtered through to the electorate: Grant was voted out of Glenfield shortly after he was voted out of the Leadership (largely thanks to Wright refusing to fund his campaign from central resources) and the voters of East Coast Bays ended their long love affair with Social Credit when Paula "took the absolute piss" by stepping aside in favour of her brother John.
Chris Leitch - A longtime Democrat member, who came second in the Tamaki by-election of 1992, Leitch finally entered Parliament in the Hobson by-election precipitated by Mike Sabin's appointment as High Commissioner to London. The Democratic Party had been out of Parliament for a year, and Leitch's victory breathed new life into the then-moribund organisation. This victory was largely down to the reluctance of the Labour Party to campaign hard all the way up there, having been demoralised by their failure to re-enter Government the year before (the Tizard-led Labour-Mana Motuhake government of 2008-11 had been a toxic mess, but preferable to left-wingers than the alternative). As such, when Leitch ended his maiden speech, and all subsequent speeches, with the words "TTIP must be destroyed", Labour quickly about-faced and did everything in their power to help National win back the seat in 2017.
Raf Manji - The loss of Leitch was outweighed by the entrance of Raf Manji, who took Fendalton back from National - he had previously worked with Finance Minister John Key in a bank, a fact which he recounted gleefully before delving into the details of how he had seen the light of Social Credit. Being respectable enough to be elected in a relatively plush part of Christchurch, and yet sufficiently ideologically sound enough to satisfy the rank and file, Leitch had no hesitation in standing aside as Leader in his favour shortly after the election. Although the Democrats are down to a single MP, they are hopeful that Manji signals another new era in their long and unlikely history.