Thunderdome
609 delegates will assemble in Linz on Saturday to select the Social Democratic Party's next leader: Hans Peter Doskozil or Andreas Babler
Servus!
On Saturday morning, the nation’s gaze will turn to Linz, where the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) will hold an extraordinary party conference. On the agenda: a light breakfast, followed by a vote to choose the party’s next leader following an advisory vote among the membership held last month. On the ballot: two candidates. First, Burgenland governor Hans Peter Doskozil, who narrowly won the members’ backing with 33.68 percent of the vote. Second, Traiskirchen mayor Andreas Babler, who surprised observers by running Doskozil close on 31.51 percent.
The incumbent Pamela Rendi-Wagner’s name will not be on the ballot presented to party delegates. Indeed, she won’t even be at the conference at all, having decided to stay away. After four-and-a-half years at the helm and a devastating last-placed finish in the membership ballot, Rendi-Wagner is planning her exit from national politics. Not only will she be stepping aside as party leader and leader of the parliamentary party, she will also give up her seat in parliament before the end of June, reports indicate. Her next moves remain unknown.
The party’s fate is now in the hands of the 609 delegates due to assemble at the Design Center Linz, a brisk 20-minute walk or a short bus ride across town from Linz’s central train station (and delegates are advised to take public transport). Babler had petitioned the party to organize a run-off vote among the members, but that idea was narrowly rejected in a 25-22 vote by the SPÖ’s national executive committee last Wednesday. The Vienna delegation to the committee voted for such a run-off. Having previously backed Rendi-Wagner, is Vienna mayor Michael Ludwig swinging behind Babler to block Doskozil?
The answer to that question may go some way to deciding the outcome of Saturday’s vote, though the prevailing wisdom says that this vote is Doskozil’s to lose. Of the 609 delegates to conference, more than half, 380, are made up of party representatives from the state and local level. Vienna sends the largest batch of delegates (96), followed by Lower Austria (84), and Upper Austria (64). 54 delegates come from the federal party executive, 50 from the trade unions, 39 from the party’s women’s organization, and 20 from assorted youth and student movements.
Doskozil not only has the advantage of having won the membership vote—albeit narrowly—but he has the support of the state parties from Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Styria, and Salzburg: a sizeable block of delegates. Tyrol and Carinthia may also choose to back him, which would leave Babler with just Vorarlberg’s five delegates. This would give Babler a very narrow path to success, one which runs through Vienna, the unions, the women’s organization and the youth movements. Even if you add all that up, I just don’t know that the numbers are there for him, though it may end up being rather close.
A battle on the conference floor for the first time since 1967 will not have been party executives’ preferred outcome. Still, this fight has given the SPÖ a clear choice over the party’s future direction. Pick Doskozil, and the party runs on a populist platform including a legally-mandated minimum wage, a stronger public healthcare system, and a harder line on immigration designed to pick up voters from the center and right. Pick Babler, and the party tacks the other way, using measures like a 32-hour working week to enliven the party base and attract voters on the left who abandoned the SPÖ a long time ago. It is for delegates to decide which route may lead to victory in the end.
Bis bald!
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