At 12 o’clock sharp on Monday, Florian Tursky invited people to the VP state party headquarters in Innsbruck for a “personal statement”. And because this wording is often a cipher for a political withdrawal, there was a lot of attention.
Things turned out differently: The former VP Digitization State Secretary, who had unsuccessfully tried to win the mayor’s chair for the VP alliance “New Innsbruck”, announced that he wanted to “stay in Innsbruck’s local politics” despite the “painful result”. .
As reported, Tursky’s VP list only achieved 10.2 percent on Sunday, while he himself only came fifth in the direct mayoral election with 10.4 percent. But he would continue to be “all there for Innsbruck,” said Tursky and claimed the city council position that his group was entitled to according to the city statute.
For the mayoral runoff election, in which incumbent Georg Willi (Greens) will run against Johannes Anzengruber (JA) on April 28, Tursky made a clear recommendation for Anzengruber. “A new Innsbruck cannot be possible with an old mayor,” said Tursky.
Tursky did not want to answer the question of whether Anzengruber would have been the better candidate for the VP alliance: “Now is not the right time to come to terms with the past,” he said. “It just developed that way.”
Willi: Opportunities “fifty-fifty”
Tursky was the reason why the then VP deputy mayor Anzengruber fell out with the ÖVP the previous year. Anzengruber was massively annoyed that Tursky was placed in front of him as the top candidate and VP city party leader, founded his own JA list and was then excluded from the ÖVP.
An election recommendation for Anzengruber also came from the Tyrolean VP-Wirtschaftsbund on Monday.
The two runoff candidates themselves – Willi and Anzengruber – meanwhile see everything open to the runoff election. Yesterday, Willi estimated his chances of re-election as “fifty-fifty” and confirmed that Anzengruber would be a “more difficult opponent” than FP mayoral candidate Markus Lassenberger would have been.
No FP recommendation for now
Lassenberger did not make any election recommendations for the time being. To do this, Anzengruber must first “declare” himself and renounce any center-left coalition of the Greens, SPÖ and List Anzengruber.
Yesterday, Green Party leader Willi showed his preferences for such a coalition. After all, this constellation would result in a majority of 22 out of 40 seats in the Innsbruck municipal council and would provide five out of seven city senate members. The coalition question should only be decided after the runoff election, said Willi. In this he agrees with Anzengruber, who yesterday didn’t show his hand when it came to coalition issues and only said: “We will talk to everyone who stands up constructively for the cause and wants to work for the people of Innsbruck.”
