Red holiday at Lake Wolfgang: Runoff election defeat for the ÖVP

Last Thursday, Christof Hillebrand (VP) implored the community. He wants to forget the “old stories” and look forward. But the conciliatory words were no longer enough.
Too much porcelain was broken before the mayoral runoff election at Lake Wolfgang, and too little content was conveyed in the past few days.

A rift had opened up between the ÖVP and SPÖ in Strobl, and communication was almost exclusively limited to mutual accusations. However, it was not Hillebrand himself who brought the otherwise fair election campaign into trouble. The Salzburg state party published a short video sequence of a panel discussion on social media in which SP candidate Harald Humer spoke about living space in Strobl. Although Humer expressed his unhappiness about “having old people out of their apartments to make room for new arrivals,” as the Salzburg VP wrote, he “certainly didn’t want to.”

Two election defeats

The publication of the video and the allegations that Humer was “manipulating and tricking,” as the Strobler VP chairman publicly wrote, backfired not only virtually.

Sunday, 5:13 p.m., Strobl officially turned red. Harald Humer, full-time “stress coach”, had passed his personal stress test: with 54.14 percent he was elected as the new mayor of Strobl – the 54-year-old received exactly 1,183 votes. Christof Hillebrand received 1002 votes and therefore only 45.86 percent. “We already won the election two weeks ago, I had nothing to lose. I also think that that was a bit of a reckoning for the things that were assumed about me,” says Humer in an interview with OÖN.

He has already spoken to the (still) incumbent mayor Josef Weikinger (VP) about the handover, and the first meeting will follow on Wednesday. “We are now taking a close look at the financial situation and will create a structure to be able to implement projects,” says Humer. He also wants to create “many more committees” and involve his political competitors.
For the ÖVP, however, it was the second election defeat in two weeks. The VP had already experienced a pitch-black evening in the local council election and lost 18.8 percentage points. SP and VP were only separated by seven votes (0.3 percentage points) in Strobl.

The police are currently investigating because a window in Humer’s house was broken during the election campaign. According to reports, it was probably a case of stone throwing, i.e. deliberate destruction. In the coming weeks it will be important to mend the political rifts in Strobl – because it will only work together.