NZ First has selected Michael Laws as its candidate for the Waitaki electorate in the November 2026 election.
Party leader Winston Peters announced the candidacy, saying Laws would bring experience, skills and leadership to Parliament. Laws will face National's Miles Anderson, who won the seat with more than 22,600 votes at the previous election.
Laws held the Hawke's Bay seat for National from 1990 to 1996, leaving Parliament after his parliamentary secretary forged a signature using a fictitious person's name to award a polling contract to a business his wife partly owned. He joined NZ First in 1996 and ran the party's election campaign that year, when it won more than 13% of the vote.
He later held the mayoralty of Whanganui from 2004 to 2010, then a council seat from 2013 to 2014. He has sat on the Otago Regional Council since 2016 and has lived in the electorate for the past decade.
Laws said he wants to become minister of broadcasting or minister of local government. He currently presents programmes on The Platform and said he would not step down from that role while campaigning or potentially as an MP, though he acknowledged it would be problematic to continue hosting if he became broadcasting minister.
On RNZ, Laws said "first on the chopping list - and this is some sort of wish fantasy of mine - would be Radio New Zealand, they don't require their existence".