Off And Running
Voting in the Social Democratic Party's leadership contest opened Monday as Pamela Rendi-Wagner's opponents campaigned across the country
Servus!
Anyone who tells you they know which way the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ)’s leadership contest is going to go also has a bridge to sell you. I, for one, won’t be using this newsletter to make any sort of prediction. While it is true that polling data indicates the incumbent Pamela Rendi-Wagner is more popular among SPÖ voters than her arch-rival Burgenland governor Hans Peter Doskozil, the party’s voters and its 148,000 members are not one and the same, and no reliable polling data exists from which we might divine the latter’s voting intentions.
Voting in the leadership contest began Monday and will run until May 10. The result is expected to be announced on or after May 22 and is considered non-binding, for the final decision on who shall lead the SPÖ going forward will be taken at an extraordinary party conference held in early June in Linz. The ballot paper, which is being mailed out to members (though they will also be able to vote online), lists four options: Rendi-Wagner, Doskozil, Traiskirchen mayor Andreas Babler, and none of the above.
Ahead of the vote, the candidates have been collecting endorsements—an indication of their respective support bases. Rendi-Wagner has the backing of the party establishment: Vienna mayor Michael Ludwig; second president of the Austrian parliament Doris Bures; former Vienna mayor Michael Häupl; former president Heinz Fischer; and four former SPÖ chancellors including Franz Vranitzky. The latter’s endorsements were shared with the public and press via official SPÖ channels as opposed to Rendi-Wagner’s personal ones—an example of underhanded dealing on the part of the party.
Doskozil’s support has come from outside of Vienna for the most part: the mayors of Linz and Klagenfurt, for example, and the former boss of the SPÖ in Styria, Michael Schickhofer. Babler has received endorsements from inside the parliamentary party including Julia Herr and Sabine Schatz. The former is a sign of Babler’s support among younger SPÖ members, and the mobilizing energy of the Socialist Students of Austria and the Socialist Youth Austria may prove useful in getting out the vote. Babler also has the backing of prominent artists and intellectuals like Robert Menasse and Elfriede Hammerl.
While Rendi-Wagner has taken the high-minded and quite risky decision not to campaign, for it may make her seem detached and aloof, Doskozil and Babler have been out and about among the membership in recent weeks on their respective Freundschaft- and Basis-Tours. I went to see Babler at one of his stops in Vienna last week, which brought hundreds of SPÖ members out on a brisk Wednesday evening to hear him speak for over an hour without notes at an open-air gathering in the Hanuschhof, a social housing project from the golden age of Red Vienna in the capital’s third district.
His pitch is a practical and detailed one—a traditional, social democratic tax-and-spend program—but more than that, it is an emotional one. Speaking in dialect, dressed in light-colored dad jeans and a hoodie over a white button-up shirt, Babler tells the faithful: I’ve been there with you through 25 years of decline and collective suffering, and I’m here to tell you this cannot go on, we need to reinvigorate the party, and that process starts with you, the membership, which represents the best of what the SPÖ has to offer. He believes it—Babler is a terribly sincere and endearing person—but it is also smart to appeal to the hearts of those who would make you leader. Babler plays a tune that appeals to members’ ears. It is for them to decide if it is in fact a siren’s song.
Bis bald!
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