Graz will probably get a communist as mayor
Graz, Austria’s largest city, has been a stronghold of the Communist Party (KPÖ) for two decades, which has been in the whole country since the National Council election after the withdrawal of the second occupation party. Elke Kahr, party leader of the Grazer KÖ will probably take the mayor’s chair. Your party achieved 28.9 percent in the municipal elections, nine percentage points more than last time.
Kahr’s election success is the reward for ongoing grassroots work, which has brought the permanent KÖ 20 to 22 percentile elections in local council elections for the past two years: even more in the better neighborhoods and around the universities. The people of the Graz KPÖ work like the purest social workers. The abolition of global capitalism is in the program, for the daily politics of Kahr and comrades that has no meaning.
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The Graz KPÖ has always been represented with a mandate in the municipal council since the beginning of the second republic, has campaigned for the socially disadvantaged from the start and started an initiative in the 1990s for ticket prices and traffic rhythms in local public transport – also takes care of real problems of the everyday life of many. This was followed by the first major election success in 1998 and the housing department for the KPÖ. This takes away the other members of the KPÖ in the last term of office and gave them the transport department because they considered the residential department to be the reason for the KPÖ’s success. Too short thought. The sustainable social work of the KPÖ and Elke Kahr is the basis of their success.
Each KPÖ member gives a large part of his salary to a social fund. He helps people in need with their rent arrears, home furnishings and repairs, food or a cheaper apartment. Or simply expert advice – without the degrading situation in front of and behind the counter. Simply put: The atypical Graz KPÖ is what the typical SPÖ used to be. In front of me I see the good neighbor and friend of the family of my childhood and youth in the workers’ settlement in Upper Styria, a social democrat of the old school, who did in the local community what Elke Kahr and her family do in Graz.
That said, not least, the SPÖ left this field to the KPÖ. The Graz KPÖ success is at the same time the failure of the SPÖ and other town hall parties. With the voters, the finding is very simple. Everything that does not vote for the ÖVP and the FPÖ can end up with the Greens and the SPÖ from election to election, and in Graz with the KPÖ. In the 2019 National Council election, the Greens were the major beneficiaries of this flexibility, in 2017 it was the SPÖ.
Elke Kahr, who was born in Graz, is 59 years old. She can be expected in the Styrian capital beyond a term of office as mayor. The political landscape is also in motion in Austria.