[6] While serving as mayor of Westland District Council, Pugh was accused of failure to declare a financial conflict of interest.

[22][23] She had been anticipating missing out again after the counting of special votes for the final results and had already started packing her Wellington apartment, which she would have to send back.

[27] Final results from the 2023 general election indicate that Pugh had won the electorate of West Coast-Tasman, beating the incumbent Damien O'Connor by a margin of 1,017 votes.

[citation needed] On 11 June 2024, Pugh was confronted by a group of protesters who were opposed to the National-led coalition government's proposed Fast-track Approvals Bill in the Golden Bay town of Tākaka.

Pugh was meeting with members of the Tākaka Community Board to foster relations with the local government body.

[29][30] Pugh revealed in 2016 that she does not believe in pharmaceutical drugs, saying that she never takes any kind of medication and has only ever given her children chiropractic treatments.

She said that nature delivers whatever people need, and that "there's nothing wrong with getting a cold or getting a flu – if you have a healthy immune system you can deal with it.

Pugh later reversed her position, saying that she accepted that human-induced climate change was real and that it was a factor in extreme weather such as Cyclone Gabrielle.

[39] Pugh said in 2023 that recent minimum pay increases had encouraged some employers to consider automation and that the consequences of those rises hadn't been thought through.

[citation needed] Pugh and her husband John live on their farm in a mountain valley at Turiwhate, near Kumara.