The Last Leg
Voting ends today in the Social Democratic Party's leadership contest with the three-way race on a knife-edge
Servus!
Today is the last day for the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ)’s 148,000 members to vote in their party’s leadership election. Over the past few weeks, incumbent Pamela Rendi-Wagner’s two rivals—Burgenland governor Hans Peter Doskozil and Traiskirchen mayor Andreas Babler—have been touring the country canvassing for votes and collecting endorsements. That barnstorming is almost at an end, and it will be left to the party to count the votes, with a result expected on or after May 22 prior to an extraordinary party congress to be held in Linz at the beginning of June.
As I’ve said to you before, only a fool would predict the outcome of this contest and I’m not going to change my mind about that. On the one hand, Rendi-Wagner certainly has the backing of the party establishment from mayor Michael Ludwig to former president Heinz Fischer and four ex-chancellors including Franz Vranitzky. She appeals to those who believe in the party’s current course—in particular that the party has its first female leader in its history—as well as, in a negative sense, those who resent in the way in which her nemesis Doskozil has gone about undermining her leadership and party unity over the past few years from his perch in Burgenland.
On the other hand, Doskozil’s supporters might very well argue—and not without reason—that Rendi-Wagner has done a good enough job of undermining the party all by herself. The SPÖ’s current trajectory is undoubtedly a downward one, having racked up underwhelming results in recent state elections in Lower Austria, Carinthia, and Salzburg. That Lower Austria and Salzburg either are or soon will be run by right-wing coalitions involving the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) is in part because the SPÖ is weak and does not represent a viable alternative. Doskozil’s case is that he is the one who can best broaden the party’s electoral coalition and reach out to voters in the center and on the right of Austrian politics.
I sense, however, that Rendi-Wagner voters also fear something else about Doskozil. He is, undoubtedly, a political populist, and his platform combines a traditional—and old-fashioned, some might argue—left-wing economic approach with more right-wing views on immigration and asylum. The concern from people like Rendi-Wagner supporter and businessman Gerhard Zeiler is that Doskozil’s pledges are more than either his state or the country can actually afford, and that Burgenland is headed towards bankruptcy or a state of financial disaster akin to how former FPÖ leader Jörg Haider left Carinthia after his spell as governor there. Zeiler is not the only person to express doubts about the numbers behind Doskozil’s policies in Burgenland.
In order to win this leadership election, Doskozil would also have to overcome skepticism from within Austria’s trade union movement who fear his pledge to institute a legally-mandated minimum wage would undermine their role in negotiating collective bargaining agreements by sector. Both Rendi-Wagner and Babler take the view that only unions can guarantee the best pay and working conditions for workers in Austria, and that a legally-mandated minimum wage would leave workers dependent on the government for pay increases. Babler goes further in arguing for the introduction for a 32-hour working week, something of which Zeiler is also suspicious, at least in the immediate.
Babler is the most popular candidate on social media, but in an election in which the average age of the electorate is 63, elections are not won and lost on Twitter. Rendi-Wagner’s endorsement from Fischer, publicized via a double-page interview in the Kronen Zeitung, is surely as important as any well-produced video blast out on Babler’s social media channels. Rendi-Wagner remains the most popular candidate among SPÖ voters, but again, SPÖ voters and SPÖ members are not one and the same; Babler’s appeal to members’ decades of disappointment or Doskozil’s assurance that he has the formula to return the party to power are powerful appeals to the heart and head. It’d be easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than call this race.
Bis bald!
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