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He wants to try again: Mario Leiter.(Bild: Mathis Fotografie)

Vorarlberg's SPÖ leader Mario will face the mayoral election in the Alpine town on March 16. It will be his third attempt and he must also dethrone the current mayor Simon Tschann. 

All good things come in threes: SPÖ regional party chairman Mario Leiter will be making his third attempt to become mayor of his home town of Bludenz in the Vorarlberg municipal and mayoral elections on 16 March. He narrowly lost to ÖVP candidates in run-off elections in both 2015 and 2020. This time, too, a run-off election and a duel between Mario Leiter and Simon Tschann (ÖVP) can be expected.

Leiter was unanimously nominated as the leading candidate for the direct mayoral election at a meeting of the party committees on Tuesday evening. He also leads the Bludenz SPÖ list, which comprises 66 candidates. The decisive factor for his renewed candidacy was, for example, the ineffective location policy of the incumbent mayor Tschann, said Leiter after the meeting. "We are seeing a really alarming number of vacancies in Bludenz town center," said Leiter, who will be 60 years old in July. In this respect, the town needs to be put back on the road to success. He also saw a need for action on affordable housing and security issues.

SPÖ tradition
Bludenz is one of the few municipalities in Vorarlberg with an SPÖ tradition. In the Alpine town, power initially shifted from the ÖVP to the SPÖ (1980: 64.97% share of the vote), then back to the ÖVP. The SPÖ was mayor from 1970 to 1995, making Leiter the first SPÖ mayor in Bludenz since Heinz Wiedemann (1983-1995). As a political newcomer, Leiter brought the SPÖ back to prominence in Bludenz in 2015; his run-off defeat against Mayor Mandi Katzenmayer (ÖVP) was a narrow 566 votes (out of 10,368 eligible voters). The gap was even smaller five years later, when Leiter lost to Tschann, who was only 28 years old at the time. The difference was 222 votes (10,703 eligible voters).

This seemed to end Leiter's political career; he resigned from his position as deputy mayor in spring 2021 and gave up the chairmanship of the city party in 2023. However, a few months later - in October 2023 - he took over the chairmanship of the Vorarlberg SPÖ at the urgent request of the party. However, the SPÖ did not make any headway in the state elections in the fall of 2024 and lost 0.40 percentage points to 9.06% of the vote. Leiter has been club chairman since then.

The fact that Tschann was not finally convicted of abuse of office in December also makes this year's ballot highly controversial. He received an eleven-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 51,000 euros. Tschann filed an appeal for annulment and an appeal and will stand in the election on March 16.