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Michael Ludwig is an impassive politician who hardly polarizes. It is a classic “Red Vienna” product. Now you have to show that you can not only manage this, but also renew it.
Michael Ludwig is the mayor and governor of Vienna, an influential combination.
The ambassador introduced him as the “politician with the largest office in the country” when he recently inaugurated a friendship tram between the United States and Austria with Chancellor Mike Pompeo, says Michael Ludwig. For the meeting with the foreign press shortly before the Vienna elections, the office is still too small in the days of Corona. Instead, it takes place in the city’s venerable Senate meeting room. The portraits of his deceased predecessors look down on the mayor of Vienna, “only those who were elected in democratic times,” as Ludwig specifies. They are all politicians from the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ).
Vienna is of utmost importance in Austria. This also applies to Mayor Ludwig, who launched a Friendship Streetcar together with the US Foreign Minister in August.
The highest importance of Vienna
Ludwig made good on the claim to continue red dominance on Sunday. According to projections, the SPÖ won 42.1 percent of the votes in the first election among him as the top candidate, 2.5 points more than five years ago. The urn, which was generally shifted to the left, is of national importance, not just because of the size of Ludwig’s desk. As mayor of the capital and captain of the most important federal state of Vienna, he unites an enormous amount of power. Almost a quarter of all Austrians live here; In 2019, a quarter of gross domestic product was generated here with almost 100 billion euros.
With his electoral victory in the red bulwark, Ludwig confirms himself as the most influential voice within the SPÖ. The heavily beaten former big game can use the positive signal from Vienna. The fact that Ludwig will have an important voice in future leadership discussions, but is out of the question as party chairman, underscores the importance of the mayor position: as head of the Vienna apparatus, he is significantly more powerful.
The municipal administration, including associated companies, is made up of 64,834 people. This “Red Vienna” aims to provide all residents with a comprehensive network of social services and educational opportunities, thus largely creating equal opportunities. Ludwig, born in 1961, is a classic product of this system, the core elements of which spread throughout Austria in the 1970s under Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky.
Education and community building
The mayor grew up in one of the 220,000 flats of the city council whose rents are subsidized by the city council. His mother was a single worker who had a second night job. However, modest circumstances did not prevent Ludwig from attending a middle-class elementary school, where he began to establish close contacts with the business elite. He has a personal friendship with the president of the Chamber of Commerce, who belongs to the conservative ÖVP.
Ludwig studied and received his doctorate with a thesis on the history of the Party of Socialist Unity in the GDR. He worked in public and adult education, which also belong to the orbit of social democratic Vienna. In 1994 he began his political career as a councilor on the outskirts of Floridsdorf, which led him to the government of Vienna in 2007 as councilor for Housing, Housing and Urban Renewal. He knew how to use the influential office politically effectively: under him, the city built its own municipal housing for the first time in decades, a symbolic step.
When Mayor Michael Häupl resigned in 2018, Ludwig prevailed as representative of the right-wing party in a campaign election. This represents comparatively restrictive positions on immigration issues. For example, Ludwig introduced priority for long-time residents in municipal housing and emphasized that he represented not only left-wing voters in the city center, but also the more conservative people in outlying working-class districts. . But he distances himself from the xenophobic agitation of the Freedom Party. “We do not participate in the competition who is more cruel to foreigners,” he clarifies. Heroes and “Gfraster”, a dialect word for malicious people, exist in all population groups.
Floating over the election campaign
The statement is indicative of Ludwig’s calm, but also very vague rhetoric. With his policy of hugs, he filled trenches within the party. It is also relatively inappropriate as an enemy image of the political opponent. In the election campaign he seemed to float above his opponents, he did not even engage in substantive discussions. In debates it sometimes seemed as if Ludwig had already been elected, and the ubiquitous slogan “Vienna in the best hands” was hard to beat in terms of vagueness.
Ludwig agreed that the FPÖ, which had strongly oppressed the Social Democrats in the workers’ districts, was reduced by three-quarters after the scandals and the break with Heinz-Christian Strache. But it also seems that the Viennese appreciated Ludwig’s quiet town father style. Ludwig may be a gadget man, but he’s people-friendly and a talented salesman in his town.
The downside of the coin is that it lacks visionary. “Uninspired and uninspired” is how a politician calls the mayor, who is fundamentally well disposed towards him. Furthermore, structural problems tend to be ignored, downplayed or overlooked: the enormous challenges of integration have been promoting segregation trends for years; The promises of “Red Vienna” can hardly be kept in an increasingly diverse city. As journalist Melisa Erkurt recently demonstrated in a book, schools are also far from the ideal of equal opportunities. In the case of municipal buildings, on the other hand, there is an urgent need for investments worth billions of dollars to preserve the substance.
Blow to the heart
Ludwig did not cause these problems, but they are concentrated in the capital. The same applies to the corona pandemic, which hits the heart of cosmopolitan Vienna, which is largely financially dependent on international guests. Ludwig responded with the distribution of money and effective media campaigns such as the gastronomic voucher for all Viennese, the “Schnitzel-Fifties”. Ludwig dismissed the criticism of the crown’s management from the overburdened city authorities as “an attack,” and thus fell into the front-line position that both sides like to cultivate: “Red Vienna” against conservative rural Austria.
After celebrating the electoral victory, Ludwig has to show that he can not only manage Vienna’s social democratic traditions, but also renew them; the city is only facing the great crisis, including a predictable wave of bankruptcies. After all, he has all the options and is deliberately keeping a low profile on whether he will continue the coalition with the Greens or trust the liberals of the Neos party or even the ÖVP. None of them will contest the larger office.
