The Citizens' Association was founded in 1911 under the name of the Wellington Citizens League, created with the goal of electing "desirable" candidates to the Wellington City Council to represent the needs of businessmen in the local community. In 1921 the Citizens League was renamed as the Civic League a name it would retain until changing names again to the Citizens' Association in the lead up to the 1933 civic elections. The body grew from the earlier Civic League organisation and also absorbed the Greater Wellington Electors' Association and Ratepayers' Association to jointly nominate and endorse candidates for local government. It picked candidates from applicants for Wellington's mayoralty, City Council, Harbour Board and Hospital Board. Despite several publicly embarrassing selection controversies, the Citizens' Association controlled the council from the time of its inception until finally losing its decades long majority in 1986 when the Labour Party won its first ever majority with Labour's Jim Belich also capturing the mayoralty for Labour. It was less successful in controlling the Mayoralty particularly during the 18 year period of 1956–74 when Labour's Frank Kitts was Mayor.
The Citizens' Association, throughout its entire existence, had no formal link with the National Party or any other political party. Many times opponents attempted to debunk the Citizens' Association claim to possess an "anti-party" ideology by linking the two. The matter surfaced several times such as in the 1977 elections when Labour mayoral candidate Sir Frank Kitts stated that he had been informed by Citizens' Association members that the National Party had been using its head office officials to advise the Citizens' Association about its local election campaign and how best to keep Labour out of local office. The director of the National Party, Barrie Leay, said the claim was "totally untrue" and the Citizens' campaign co-ordinator Michael Veal also denied any contact with the National Party. In 1983 Citizens' leader, and mayoral candidate, Ian Lawrence replied at a husting that he did not know which of his colleagues were or were not National Party members and nor did he care; "It is not a criterion. The Citizens' Association of Wellington has no formal connection with the National Party." In 1992, when responding to an jibe that the Citizens' Association were just "the National Party in local body drag", Citizens' president John Liddiard stated "For sure, we have National Party members but we also have people who aren't aligned to a political party." Unmistakably however, several Citizens' councillors were National MPs and many more has stood unsuccessfully for parliament as National candidates. Between 1938 and 1966 alone there were 11 Citizens' candidates who stood as National Party candidates demonstrating a presence of joint membership, informal or otherwise.
