Election drama: Cr Swan off the team before it’s even announced

Cr Tegan Swan will no longer be running on the Rodger Pryce team. She spoke to the Advocate to explain what happened.

Tegan Swan.

The new ‘Together, we’ll fix it’ team in the upcoming Coffs Harbour City Council elections has been reduced by one before it was even officially announced.

It was revealed via a press release on Monday afternoon prior to the team launch on Tuesday:

The number of people on the ‘Together, we’ll fix it’ team has been reduced by one.

Tegan Swan and Rodger Pryce have agreed that while they will both continue to stand for election, they will not be on the same team. Both wish each other success for the future and have a highly held respect for each other.

Rodger is happy to discuss this issue at tomorrow‘s campaign launch along with the serious local issues the team intends to fix when elected.

In past weeks it was rumoured that current Coffs Harbour City Councillor Tegan Swan would be joining team leader and mayoral hopeful Rodger Pryce on his ticket and therefore not contesting the role of Mayor.

Cr Swan was interviewed on breakfast radio last week and confirmed this, saying she was very keen to be re-elected as a Cr but was not ready to take on the role of Mayor.

Cr Swan also indicated that John Lardner and Nikki Williams are part of the team.

Speaking to the Advocate on Monday afternoon Cr Swan gave her version of events saying everybody probably got a “little bit excited” and that a few more discussions should have taken place before announcements were made.

Tegan Swan with her children Tasman, Evelyn and Lincoln at home during the height of COVID-19 last year.

“I still think Rodger would be a wonderful mayor. I just wanted to be number one on the Councillor ballot, to ensure I was elected as a Councillor, but Rodger thought he should be in that top spot so you can’t have two people at number one.”

There will be two ballot papers in the Coffs Harbour local government election – one for Mayor and one for the Councillors – and she admits that the Mayoral candidates are generally listed as number one in the corresponding Councillor ballot.

“But I just wanted to change things up a bit.”

Now she has decided to run for Mayor and will work on building her own team of running mates.

“But I’ve got no idea who that’s going to be so far.”

Cr Swan was the Deputy Mayor prior to George Cecato taking on the role in September last year.