One of the most spectacular election campaigns in Upper Austria is taking place this year in the tranquil town of Bad Ischl. A duel like the one between the mayoress Ines Schiller (SP) and their challenger Hannes Mathes (until recently also SPÖ) has not yet experienced the city of 14,000.
The roots of the duel go back years. As the then mayor Hannes Heide (SP) applied for a place in the EU Parliament in 2018, many saw Hannes Mathes as his logical successor. The organic farmer and budding lawyer had already had a career in the city council and was a political professional as the state manager of the SPÖ Salzburg. But city party chairman Sepp Reisenbichler, also a political heavyweight as a member of the ÖGB federal board, claimed the successor for himself.
Shortly after Heide moved into the European Parliament in spring 2019, Reisenbichler died completely unexpectedly. And when Heide gave up the mayor’s office at the end of 2019, the city party decided in favor of his wife Ines Schiller as his successor. This solution was not illogical. The pedagogue had made a name for herself as a councilor for social services. Mathes, in turn, had meanwhile given up his involvement in the city party.
But not his goal of becoming mayor. The strategy that the 44-year-old political strategist put together is like a script. And in that a role for the Bad Ischler ÖVP is planned. Phase one: At the end of 2020 the rumor surfaced that the former hopeful Hannes Mathes could apply for the mayor’s office and compete against Schiller. Mathes makes the public fidget for months and keeps talking.
Phase two: As if out of nowhere, a list of citizens called “Ischl can do more” emerges in March and complains about the allegedly catastrophic conditions in the city.
Phase three: The one everyone is talking about takes the stage. Mathes announced his candidacy in May and called on the people to march by his side.
Phase four: The citizens’ list and the ÖVP Bad Ischl join Mathes a few weeks later and form an electoral list together with him. With that the battle is on. The ÖVP Bad Ischl is giving up its brand in this election and is not creating its own list. She should only see her chance to break the SPÖ dominance in Bad Ischl in the joint coup with Mathes. Not everyone in the city party wanted to play the game, however. VP parliamentary group chairman Wilhelm Blohberger and City Councilor for Economic Affairs Wilhelm Gollowitzer resigned in the spring. The turquoise country party is involved, country manager Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer met Mathes in Bad Ischl at an early age.
While the SP functionaries didn’t quite know what was happening to them, the former red state party secretary Mathes was already unpacking his heavy tools. Since then, he has been covering Bad Ischl every week with mailings in which he complains once about a lack of parking spaces and another time about drug trafficking. The mayor and the SPÖ are always to blame. In early summer even a district police commander saw himself Gerhard Steiger called to put things in the right light. Ischl has no bigger drug problem than other cities of this size, he wrote in a letter to the editor.
Mathes, on the other hand, was already taking the next stroke and announced that it would also be Anna, Maria and Luisa Reisenbichler – three daughters of the late Josef Reisenbichler – as well as several former SPÖ functionaries joined his movement. He himself resigned from the SPÖ the day before his candidacy was announced and has since emphasized at every opportunity that he is not a party politician. Consequently, he also rejects the statement that his movement has a close relationship with the ÖVP. A VP employee writes Mathes ?? Press releases and his election posters are stuck on ÖVP poster stands. Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer himself speaks of an “electoral alliance”.
Otherwise, the Reds try to ignore the orchestrated attack. You have little choice either. Mayor Schiller and her team considered for a long time whether they should attack Mathes as directly – but decided against it.
Nobody in the imperial city knows how the battle for Bad Ischl will end because there has never been a situation like this. Internal SPÖ surveys see a head-to-head race between Schiller and Mathes. A runoff is almost certain.
