Whither Vienna's Greens?
Why Birgit Hebein had to resign as leader of Vienna's Green Party and what's next for the opposition party
Servus!
For Birgit Hebein, the downfall was swift. On October 11, 2020, the social worker-turned-deputy mayor of Vienna led the Green Party to their best ever result in local elections: 14.8 percent of the vote, 0.2 percent up on what the party achieved under Hebein’s predecessor, Maria Vassilakou, in 2005. The Greens upped their seats on the city council to 16 and doubled its representation on the senate. With 10 years governing experience behind them, their mandate renewed by the electorate, Hebein seemed to be in a strong position to negotiate a renewal of the existing pact with Vienna’s Social Democratic Party (SPÖ).
Cut to December 30, when Hebein announced that she would resign as party leader. She was no longer deputy mayor, the SPÖ having decided to form a coalition with the liberal NEOS instead. She had also been shut out of any formal leadership role in party internal elections. Peter Kraus and Judith Pühringer were chosen to be the Greens’ ‘ministers without portfolio’ in city government, while David Ellensohn won the race to be their city council faction leader. Hebein had lost the confidence of her party, and thus, surrendered to her fate.
Hebein’s time at the top was brief. She became party boss in November 2018 and took over the reins from Vassilakou as deputy mayor in June 2019. She inherited a coalition from Vassilakou and a mayor in the form of Michael Ludwig who himself was bequeathed the red-green coalition from his predecessor, Michael Häupl, in May 2018. To muddy the waters further, in January 2020, the Greens formed a coalition at the federal level with the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), for whom Red Vienna has long been their number one enemy. With a foot in both camps, the Greens became a political double agent.
That Ludwig was discontented with the red-green coalition was no secret. He is a politician who greatly values personal relationships. Ludwig is far closer to Walter Ruck, the head of Vienna’s chamber of commerce, from the ÖVP than he ever was to Hebein. Over topics such as an alcohol ban in and around Vienna’s train stations, a congestion charge, or a plan to make Vienna’s city center ‘car free,’ Ludwig and Hebein found themselves in frequent and open dispute.
By the time Hebein took over as deputy mayor, elections were a year away. Whether the SPÖ or the Greens were responsible for beginning the campaign depends upon whom you ask. Either way, under Hebein’s leadership, the Greens acted like an opposition party in government. She was far too enamoured of ‘pop-up politics’—temporary cycle lanes and swimming pools. It was PR and little else. The SPÖ, Rosa Winkler-Hermaden has reported, thought Hebein should have expended more effort persuading her Green colleagues to re-open the parks in Vienna controlled by the federal government and closed during the first lockdown than making headlines for herself.
Had Hebein made way after the 2020 elections for Ellensohn or Kraus to become deputy mayor, the SPÖ and Greens could have hashed out a new coalition agreement. Hebein, moreover, could have remained party leader—albeit one without a formal office. As it was, she made it very easy for Ludwig to discard the Greens and turn to the NEOS, a smaller party which demanded less from the SPÖ in negotiations (though their arrangement is a subject for another briefing).
The Greens are on the outside looking in once more. The next leadership contest will likely pit Ellensohn, long in the tooth, against the younger Kraus on a reported joint ticket with Pühringer. Their candidacy would fuse the party’s pragmatic and left wings, Fabian Schmid has written, healing a division opened up by Hebein who came from the left of the party and attempted to weld the party’s environmental politics onto a left-wing socio-economic program. A Kraus-Pühringer leadership would be a sign a more united and perhaps pragmatic party in opposition to Vienna’s new red-pink coalition.
Bis bald!
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A Minister Leaves
Austria’s labor minister Christine Aschbacher resigned Saturday evening after she was accused of having plagiarized large parts of her undergraduate and postgraduate theses, both of which also demonstrated a poor grasp of the German language. She was replaced the following day by Martin Kocher, head of Vienna’s Institute for Advanced Studies, a leading economic research institute.
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The Vaccine Arrives
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