Austin voters elect Kirk Watson, who served as mayor two decades ago, to lead the city again

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In a good race, Austin voters picked a well-known face Tuesday night time to information the capital metropolis over the following two years because the area offers with skyrocketing housing prices and explosive progress.

In a contest between two Austin Democrats, former state Sen. Kirk Watson narrowly prevailed over state Rep. Celia Israel and retook the seat he final held greater than twenty years in the past.

“I’m as grateful at present as I used to be 25 years in the past to be entrusted with this job,” Watson mentioned at a watch celebration in Austin’s Rosedale neighborhood. “It means quite a bit to me to know that Austinites in each a part of this metropolis nonetheless need the sort of management that I’ve tried to ship each as mayor and as your state senator.”

Miles away at a watch celebration in North Austin, Israel conceded to Watson — whereas ruefully acknowledging Austin’s rising unaffordability, the race’s defining difficulty.

“Our marketing campaign was based on a quite simple concept: The individuals who constructed this metropolis and who proceed to construct this metropolis, who gown our wounds, who educate our children, who drive our buses, who reply our 911 calls … they deserve the respect and the compassion {that a} progressive metropolis can provide them,” Israel mentioned.

The race to steer Texas’ fourth-largest metropolis was a squeaker. Israel beat Watson in Travis County, which incorporates virtually all of Austin, by 17 votes. However Watson constructed a lead of 881 votes in Williamson County and 22 votes in Hays County, in keeping with unofficial election night time tallies — delivering him the mayor’s seat.

Polls closed at 7 p.m. Determination Desk HQ known as the election for Watson at 10:02 p.m.

The contentious race — which went to a runoff after neither candidate bought greater than 50% of the vote within the November election — was largely formed by the town’s more and more dire housing affordability disaster.

Watson, who served as Austin mayor from 1997 to 2001 and largely pitched himself as a back-to-basics candidate, and Israel every laid out intensive proposals for how one can deal with the housing disaster and enhance the town’s housing provide — although they struck totally different tenors on how one can strategy it.

Israel known as for aggressive motion to deal with the disaster and she or he mentioned she would work carefully with “pro-housing” advocates. However in a metropolis the place new housing growth is commonly met with steep opposition from neighborhood teams and environmentalists, Watson promised a extra diplomatic technique that may goal to herald extra new housing with out alienating the neighborhoods that oppose it.

Watson gained an enormous fundraising benefit over Israel early on and saved it over the course of the election.

Through the common election and runoff, Watson amassed greater than $1.8 million, giving Watson an almost 3-to-1 fundraising benefit over Israel’s haul of roughly $651,000. Watson spent greater than $1.5 million by Dec. 3 whereas Israel spent just below $566,000, in keeping with the most recent marketing campaign finance filings.

On prime of the town’s housing disaster, Watson must cope with the state’s Republican management, which has grown more and more hostile to Austin and Texas’ bluer city areas.

Inside the previous two years, Austin lower the town’s police spending within the wake of George Floyd protests and rolled again a ban on homeless encampments in public areas — strikes that Republican lawmakers within the Texas Legislature later rebuked by passing new legal guidelines reining in these measures and proscribing different main Texas cities from following in Austin’s steps.

Through the marketing campaign, Watson pitched himself as a veteran of the Legislature who may construct a working relationship with state GOP leaders — or at the very least keep away from their unfriendly gaze.

“Once we select to work collectively, we are going to heal previous divides and resolve previous issues,” Watson mentioned Tuesday night time. “Once we select to work collectively, Austin’s future will get brighter and brighter and brighter, I promise.”

Watson must run once more in two years, somewhat than 4 as Austin mayors usually do. That’s as a result of Austin voters handed a poll proposition final 12 months to maneuver the town’s mayoral elections from gubernatorial election years to presidential election years in a bid to extend voter turnout.