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That doesn’t happen very often: a personal rogue at the head of a state party after successful elections. After the second round of the mayoral elections in Vorarlberg on Sunday, in which the SPÖ surprisingly took over the mayor’s office in the provincial capital Bregenz after 30 years and will thus provide the mayor of nearby Hard with the SPÖ regional leader Martin Staudinger, this triggers a backing. At the state parliament club SPÖ, the course was re-marked on Monday. Thomas Hopfner will follow Staudinger as head of the SPÖ club in November. In an interview with the “Wiener Zeitung”, Staudinger also stated that he will resign from the state presidency of the SPÖ in 2021: “That is my goal to see who is the team of the future.”
Staudinger is implementing his announcement this summer that if elected mayor he will resign from the leadership of the SPÖ country. In the 14,000-strong community of Hard, which is known as a handball stronghold beyond Vorarlberg, the regional head of the SPÖ has been elected mayor with a two-thirds majority. He will concentrate on this role in the future, despite the fact that he is only 41 years old and only two years ago became the head of SPÖ in Vorarlberg.
Staudinger justified his decision by saying that the future head of the Vorarlberg state party should also be the SPÖ’s main candidate in the autumn 2024 state elections. The next city council and mayoral elections would then be imminent in 2025. ” The fact that I’m going to be the leading candidate for the state elections doesn’t fit, “says Staudinger, referring to the inauguration of the mayor’s office in Hard on Lake Constance. “I don’t want to run for both elections.”
Decision of the presidency of the party conference in 2021
His goal now is to “find as many new people as possible” who are eligible as candidates for the 2024 state elections. Due to the crown, the decision must be made by a state party conference next year.
Staudinger comes from Hard, is an economist by training and worked, among other things, in the cabinet of the former Minister of Social Affairs, Rudolf Hundstorfer. In the state elections in October the previous year, the Vorarlberg SPÖ was able to win slightly with him as the top candidate: after the new edition of the state-level black-green coalition in the state parliament, the SPÖ remains an opposition party.
In the second round of the mayoral elections, the ÖVP was hit hard on Sunday, while the SPÖ managed to double the number of red mayors from two to four with the conquest of Bregenz and Hard. It was painful for the ÖVP and the quintessential positive surprise for the SPÖ that former state party leader Michael Ritsch made the leap to the mayor of Bregenz on the fourth attempt. He won the runoff election against the city chief who has been in office since 1998, ÖVP veteran Markus Linhart, with 51.7 percent compared to around 48.3 percent for Linhart. ÖVP Governor Markus Wallner described this as a “severe blow”.
New mayor of Bregenz SPÖ with free play of forces
This also marks the end of the black-green coalition in the state capital of Bregenz, which has around 28,000 residents. Because future Mayor Ritsch announced on Monday that he wanted to govern with a free play of forces in the local council. There, the ÖVP has a relative majority with 15 seats compared to the SPÖ with 11 seats.
As in Lech am Arlberg, discontent with the incumbent mayor was the main reason Linhart was excluded from the second round. In Bregenz, depending on the tastes of the residents, there has apparently not been enough progress in recent years on various projects, for example around the new construction of the train station or the Seestadt area. That is why the SPÖ had hoped in advance that it could win the second round of the mayoral election with Michael Ritsch. Ritsch now resigns from his term in the state parliament in October. At the state level and also at the level of the 96 municipalities of Vorarlberg, the ÖVP remains the clear dominant force. In Feldkirch and Bludenz, he decided the second round of the mayor’s election on Sunday for candidate ÖVP.
