Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen presented a new donation balance and exceeded the one million euro mark. So far he has received almost 95,000 euros from small donors and 150,000 euros from large donors. A new addition is the Grazer SLE Schuh GmbH with 45,000 euros. However, three quarters of the previous election budget comes from the greenswho have so far supported the election campaign of their former party leader with 755,233 euros.
Since the last publication a week and a half ago, Van der Bellen has received around 12,000 euros in new small donations and 55,000 euros from large donors over 3,500 euros. Added as major donors Renate Tojner (10,000 euros) and the Graz SLE shoe with 45,000 euros. The company of the Styrian IV President Stefan Stolitzka was one of Van der Bellen’s largest private donors in 2016. The largest single donor this year is still the media manager Gerhard Zeiler (50,000 euros). The Green members of the government Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler downwards have each transferred 4,000 euros, the Greens (including state and regional parties) 755,233 euros.
Three million euros for Rosencrantz
Van der Bellen’s campaign manager Martin Radjaby-Rasset thanked the 660 small donors in particular. “An independent and non-partisan electoral movement is forming here and we are very pleased about that,” he said in a broadcast, taking the one-million mark as a good sign. When asked by APA, it was not possible to find out how much money the campaign had planned and how much the Greens had promised. Radjaby said it was important “to come within reach of the sum announced by other candidates”.
Van der Bellen’s election campaign manager is alluding to the FPÖ, which claims to have budgeted three million euros for its candidate Walter Rosenkranz. The anti-vaccination party MFG wants to put around 100,000 euros into its campaign for party leader Michael Brunner. Dominik Wlazny aka Marco Pogo from the Beer Party and right-wing blogger Gerald Grosz have not yet given a specific budget.
FPÖ does not accept donations
This means that the election campaign for the Hofburg will be significantly cheaper this year than it was six years ago. At that time, the FPÖ invested eight million euros, Van der Bellen 7.9. However, the 2016 election campaign dragged on for almost a year because the runoff election was canceled and repeated in December. In addition to 4.8 million euros from the Greens, Van der Bellen was also able to raise almost 3.1 million euros in private donations. Of this, 2.1 million euros were made up of small donations of less than 3,500 euros. The FPÖ waived donations then as they do this year.
Source: Nachrichten
